PROMINENT AUCKLAND WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 21, 25 January 1930, Page 14

PROMINENT AUCKLAND WOMEN.

MRS. MARY STUART BOYD,

The League of Pemvomen was fortunate when it was formed in Auckland in having for its first and only president a woman of such wide literary and social experience as Mrs. Stuart Boyd, whose life had been passed in the inner literary world of London/and Scotland, Born north of the Tweed, Mrs. Boyd met and married Mr. Stuart Boyd, the well-known illustrator of the and a member of the staff of "Punch," with whom she went to London and made a home in St. John's Wood, the residential centre of the art and literary world of the 'eighties. It was . here that she began to , . write, and bar contributions were frequently seen in, publications of such literary standing as "The Ludgate Magazine," "Black and White," the fine illustrated paper which . shared with "The Graphic" the distinction of the finest produced paper of its kind, and "Blackwood's," than Which there could be no greater distinction for a writer of that /'era.,./ './'..■.:,, ; ■ ./.,.', Mrs. Boyd, after doing, a good deal of article writing; turned her pen to fiction, in which she 'was very successful, - and has a ; long list' ,'6f novels with her; name on their back, amongst which are "With Clipped Wings/' "The Glen,", /■/"The•-'Man : in the. '- Wood," "The Backwater Mystery," "The Misses Make-Beliove," and a ghost story called "The Mystery of, the Castle." -:A desire to visit her sister in Auckland, Mrs. John Burns, made Mr. and Mrs. Boyd take a trip to New Zealand; and on the way back to England she.wrote the book called "Our Stolen Summer." So that she should miss nothing in a crowded life she arrived in Samoa just at the time of the former /uprising, during the life of Stevenson, the troubles of which he depicted in . ;"A Footnote to History," and had to take wfuge on an' American man-of-war. Her experiences were embodied in an article which appeared in "The Morning Post" in London, and helped to make the situation clear to the people of '/'England. ; , .. ■..'.•.■'" ' < ■ :.' In social life Mrs. Boyd has the honour of being one of the founders of the first Lyceum Club, when only,writers and artists of distinction could be elected members, before the 'club took its present form. Living as she did % in the.heart of literary London, Mrs. Boyd,met and knew, intimately many of ;theinpst famous men and women of this age. Amongst them are; 1 Sir James /fßarrie; who is an intimate friend, Bret Harte, who was one of their family 'circle,- W. Pett Ridge, W. W.'Jacobs, William Caine, Jerome K. Jerome, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Beatrice Harraden, Annie S. Swan, Anthony Hope, and many other celebrated names. Amongst the artists whom she frequently met Were Sir George Reid, president of the, Scottish Academy, David Murray, R.A., Alfred East, R.A., John \ Lavery, R.A., Bernard Partridge, D. Y. Cameron, R.A., Walter Crane, Lewis Baumer, William Strang, arid' many others,; specimens of whose work adorn Mrs.'Boyd's home at Takapuna