Mary Stuart Boyd

Mary Stuart Boyd was a Scottish writer born in 1860. Library and author records identify her as the author of travel writing as well as fiction, and her surviving books show a strong interest in everyday life, landscape, and the small human details that make a place memorable.

She often worked alongside her husband, the artist and illustrator Alexander Stuart Boyd, who illustrated some of her books. Among her best-known works are Our Stolen Summer, The Fortunate Isles: Life and Travel in Majorca, Minorca and Iviza, and A Versailles Christmas-Tide, books that mix travel, family life, and sharp observation in an easy, inviting style.

Records from the National Library of New Zealand note that she was brought up in Glasgow, married Alexander Stuart Boyd in 1880, and later settled in Takapuna, New Zealand, around 1920. They had one son, Stuart, who was killed in World War I in 1916. Mary Stuart Boyd died in 1937.