Mary Stewart, the British author of romantic thrillers who jumped genres in her 50s to create an internationally best-selling trilogy of Merlin books, reimagining the Arthurian legend from a sorcerer’s point of view, died on May 9 at her home in the village of Loch Awe, on the west coast of Scotland. She was 97.
Her death was announced by her British publisher, Hodder & Stoughton.
When “The Crystal Cave,” the first book of the trilogy, was published in 1970, Ms. Stewart already had a dozen or so novels to her credit — among them “Nine Coaches Waiting” (1958), “The Moon-Spinners” (1962) and “The Gabriel Hounds” (1967) — and was known for bringing an unexpected intelligence and historical resonance to what some dismissed as frivolous women’s fiction.
Reading Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain,” she was inspired to retell the story of King Arthur as seen by Merlin, the king’s adviser and house magician. The trilogy introduced her work to a new generation and, in many cases, to male readers for the first time.
In “The Crystal Cave,” Merlin is tutored in the sorcerer’s arts and moves Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury Plain. “The Hollow Hills” (1973) follows Arthur’s growth from afar while Merlin seeks the great sword that can bring Arthur to the throne. In “The Last Enchantment” (1979), Arthur is faced with sinister powers and plots while Merlin grows old, weak and mad. The books, set in the fifth century, were praised for their unusual blend of fantasy and historical detail.
“The Wicked Day” (1983) was not technically part of the trilogy but is often discussed with those books because it focused on Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son. A much later novel, “The Prince and the Pilgrim” (1995), was also set in the Arthurian era; its characters included the sorceress Morgan le Fay.
Many fans, however, preferred to regard the Merlin books as a momentary blip in Ms. Stewart’s real career, that of elevating the romance genre.
“Mary Stewart sprinkled intelligence around like stardust,” the columnist Melanie Reid wrote in the Glasgow newspaper The Herald in 2004. “Every chapter was headed with a quote from Marvell or Shakespeare or Browning. The fineness of her mind shone through.”
Ms. Stewart was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1968, received the Frederick Niven Literary Award from the Scottish chapter of International PEN for “The Crystal Cave” and in 2006 was given a lifetime achievement award by the Scottish Parliament.
Mary Florence Elinor Rainbow was born on Sept. 17, 1916, in Sunderland, England, a port city and shipbuilding center in Durham County on the northeastern coast. The oldest of three children of an Anglican clergyman, she began writing as a small child; she told interviewers that she composed her first poem before she was 4.
She received a bachelor’s degree from Durham University in 1938, began teaching and was soon an English instructor there.
In 1945, she met Frederick H. Stewart, who taught geology at Durham University, at a costume ball celebrating V-E Day. She came as the Merry Widow; he was dressed in a girl’s gym outfit with a red bow in his hair. They were married three months later. Her husband was knighted in 1974, although she preferred not to be called Lady Stewart.
Ms. Stewart continued to write poetry. It was her husband who suggested she try her hand at a novel. Storytelling, she told The New York Times in 1979, “came as naturally as leaves to a tree.”
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“It was a pity, I told myself, that I had wasted so much time,” she added.
Her American publisher, William Morrow & Company, estimated her American sales then at 25 million to 30 million copies.
Her first novel, “Madam, Will You Talk?,” about an Englishwoman on holiday in the South of France and a young boy’s father who may have committed murder, was published in 1955, shortly before she and her husband moved to Edinburgh. It was followed in quick succession by a series of works that combined elements of romance, suspense, mystery and a decided sense of place.
Between 1956 and 1980, Ms. Stewart published 14 more novels. She slowed down in the ’80s and ’90s to produce only six books, including a poetry collection.
Despite Ms. Stewart’s devoted following and sales success, Hollywood and its British equivalent rarely came calling. “The Moon-Spinners” was made into a 1964 American movie starring Hayley Mills and re-edited two years later as a three-part television film on the series “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.” In 1991 “The Crystal Cave” became a British television film, “Merlin of the Crystal Cave.”
Ms. Stewart’s final novel, published in 1997, was “Rose Cottage,” set in a small English village just after World War II. Her husband died in 2001. The couple had no children.
Interviewed in 1989 by Raymond H. Thompson for his “Taliesin’s Successors: Interviews With Authors of Modern Arthurian Literature,” Ms. Stewart sympathized with the women of Merlin’s time.
“Don’t forget what a dreadful life these medieval women must have led,” she said. “Shut up in those ghastly castles while the men were away having fun. Nothing to do but your embroidery and play at ball in the garden.”
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