Mary Williams
Mary Williams, originally born Winifred Mary Harvey in Leicester, England, on July 21, 1903, was a versatile British author and artist known for her contributions to literature, particularly in the genres of romance and supernatural fiction. Throughout her life, she experienced several personal transformations, including three marriages, the last occurring when she was eighty years old. Williams had a promising start in ballet, which was curtailed by an injury, leading her to explore her talents in writing and art.
Her literary career began with poetry, but she later gained recognition for her novels and short stories, often infused with themes of the occult and supernatural. Williams' prolific output during her later years included at least seventeen short-story collections and over twenty novels, with notable works such as "The Dark Land" and "Carnecrane." Besides fiction, she contributed to newspapers and served as a staff writer for the BBC in Wales. Williams remained creatively active into her old age, passing away in Cornwall on December 26, 2000. Her final collection, "The Secret Pool, and Other Stories," was published posthumously, showcasing her enduring passion for storytelling.
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Mary Williams
Writer
- Born: July 21, 1903
- Birthplace: Leicester, England
- Died: December 26, 2000
- Place of death: Cornwall, England
Biography
Mary Williams was born Winifred Mary Harvey in Leicester, England, on July 21, 1903. She was always called Mary; the surname Williams came from her second husband, Bill Williams. She was married three times, the third time at age eighty. There is speculation that she was descended from the novelist Samuel Richardson, who invented the epistolary novel, although such a link has never been proven.
Gifted in dance, Williams had a promising early career in ballet cut short when she broke a foot. She still had literature, art, and drama to fall back on. Although not known as a poet, her first published work came in 1922 with a slender volume of her poetry, Dreams of England. She soon began acting and writing plays for a small theatrical company and she also attended Leicester Art College. She maintained an interest in art for the rest of her life and had a talent for humorous illustrations. She particularly enjoyed painting the landscapes and people of Wales and Cornwall, England, where she spent most of her adulthood. She used many of those same landscapes as settings and inspiration for her novels and short stories.
In the 1940’s, she wrote and illustrated children’s books under her maiden name, Mary Harvey. After marrying Gerald Nethercot, she wrote and published her first romance novel, Louise, under the name Mary Nethercot. That book, originally published in 1947, was reissued in 1981. Williams eventually settled in Cornwall and married for a second time.
In 1972, after her story was included in a ghost story collection, Haunted Cornwall, Williams approached the publisher of the book, William Kimber & Co., and sold them an anthology of her own ghost stories. This book was The Dark Land (1975), and over the next few years she published six similar anthologies. In 1979, she sold the same publisher a gothic historical romance called Carnecrane, and this began her most productive period as she sold numerous romantic novels and collections of ghost and occult stories throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. Her bibliography includes at least seventeen short-story collections and more than twenty novels. Almost all of her fiction, whether short stories or novels, contained elements of the occult and supernatural.
In addition to her fiction writing, Williams wrote newspaper columns, at one point becoming a staff writer for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Wales. She died in Cornwall on December 26, 2000, at the age of ninety-seven. She was still writing, and a collection of her stories, The Secret Pool, and Other Stories, was published in the year of her death.