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Mary Charlotte Julia Gordon became Mary Charlotte Julia Leith (1840–1926), she was best known as Mrs Disney Leith who was a British novelist and traveller. She was a childhood friend of Swinburne and after her husband died she visited Iceland numerous times, writing about the country and translating works from Icelandic.
Leith was born Mary Charlotte Julia Gordon, in London, and she was the daughter of Mary Agnes Blanche (born Ashburnham) and Sir Henry Percy Gordon bart in 1840. Her father had been a leading mathematician when he was at Cambridge. Her grandfathers were General Sir James Willoughby Gordon and George Ashburnham, the Earl of Ashburnham. She was brought up in the family seat of Northcourt House at Shorwell on the Isle of Wight.[1] Northcourt House was a mansion that stood inside its own park.[2]
Her first cousin was the poet Swinburne lived nearby on the Isle of Wight. He was frail but "fired with nervous energy and fearlessness to the point of being reckless."[3] They went riding and they wrote Jacobean plays together in the library at Northcourt. She was educated at home; she mastered several languages in addition to ancient Greek and Latin. She learned mathematics and was a talented pianist and organist.[1] She and Swinburne secretly collaborated on her second book, "Children of the Chapel", which was about a ten year old chorister in the 16th century. The co-authorship was not revealed until after Swinburne had died.[1]
On 14 July 1865 she married the first commander of the 106th Regiment of Foot of the Bombay Light Infantry. Colonel Robert William Disney Leith (later General) had lost an arm, gained a bullet and several sabre cuts during the Siege of Multan in 1849.[4] The coded correspondence between herself and Swinburne ceased until after her husband died.[1]
Her husband who was then a General and a Companion of the Bath, died at their home, Northcourt on the Isle of Wight, on 20th June 1892.[4] His death seems to have allowed change. She decided to visit Iceland which was a country that she long been intrigued by.[1]
In 1908 she published her book about her many visits to Iceland. The book featured twelve watercolours by herself and M. A. Wemyss.[5] Her last three novels were part of a family saga advocating Christian values and knowing your place. The first was Champion Sandy in 1910, then Black Martinmas two years later and the last Lachlan’s Widow in 1913.[6] They were all anonymous as distinct from her 1917 work which remains well known under her nom de plume of "Mrs. Disney Leith". The Boyhood of Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in America and London, was based on her memories and their surviving letters.[1]
She died in 1926. In 2023 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography included her, Jean Middlemass, Florence L. Barclay, Gabrielle Wodnil and Bessie Marchant in new biographies of eleven Victorian writers who have caught the attention of academics.[7][8]
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