Marjorie Boulton
Prolific author and stalwart of the British Esperanto scene
MARJORIE BOULTON, who has died aged 93, was one of the world’s leading “Esperantists”, an expert in the international language invented by Ludovic Zamenhof in the 19th century as a way of promoting peaceful coexistence between peoples and cultures.
She directed summer schools in Esperanto, wrote poetry in the language and in 1960 published what is considered to be the definitive biography of Zamenhof.
Zamenhof was born in the Polish part of imperial Russia in 1859 and died in Warsaw in 1917, unaware that Esperanto would be suppressed not only by Stalin and Hitler, but also by Lord Reith, the BBC’S first Director-general, who banned mention of Esperanto on the network.
But the language, conceived by raiding from established European tongues and based on simple grammar, phonetic spelling and regular word endings, lived on. Indeed it has been listed in the world’s top 100 languages and small groups of enthusiasts can be found all over the world.
In Britain, for reasons which remain obscure, one of the most energetic Esperanto communities was to be found in the Potteries area of North Staffordshire, where Marjorie Boulton was born at Burslem, Stoke-ontrent, on May 7 1924.
The city’s first Esperanto club had been founded in 1909, and in the early 1950s the local mayor, Horace Barks, prompted several city schools to include the teaching of Esperanto in the curriculum, and established an annual summer school at Barlaston. He also persuaded the brewers Bass Worthington to give a pub in the Smallthorne area the dual names of Green Star and Verda Stelo. At one point the pub once had a large board in the bar encouraging customers to use expressions such as bonan vesperon (“good evening”) and gis revido (“goodbye”). Smallthorne, which boasts such street names as Esperanto Way and Zamenhof Grove, was once known as Stoke’s “Esperanto quarter”.
Marjorie read English at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was taught by both CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, who was a supporter of Esperanto, and became lifelong friends with Somerville contemporaries including Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley.
After graduation she taught English literature for many years at a teacher training college, of which she became principal. As well as her works in Esperanto she wrote 16 books in English, including a series of introductory texts on literary genres, such as The Anatomy of Poetry (1953) and The Anatomy of the Novel (1975), and a collection of poems, Preliminaries (1949).
In 1949 she learned Esperanto and made her debut in the language through the Belartaj Konkursoj, the movement’s annual fine arts competition. Her first collection of Esperanto poems, Kontralte (“In Contralto”, 1955), was followed by Kvarpieda kamarado (“Four-footed friend,” 1956), Cent ghojkantoj (“One hundred songs of joy”, 1957), and Eroj (“Bits and pieces,” 1959). Virino che la landlimo (“Woman at the frontier”), a collection of short plays and stories, also appeared in 1959, and she produced two Esperanto short story collections. In collaboration with William Auld, she produced Rimleteroj (“Rhyming letters”, 1964). Other works include Poeto Fajrakora (1983), a study of the work of Gyulya Baghy, and Faktoj kaj Fantazioj (“Facts and Fantasies”, 1984).
For many years she was director of the summer schools at Barlaston, served as president of two Esperanto organisations and was a member of the Esperanto Academy.
Announcing her death, Tim Owen of the Esperantoasocio de Britio wrote: “Marjorie Boulton, inter la eminentaj de la Esperan topoetaro, forpasis en la aĝo de 93 jaroj merkredon la 30a de Aŭgusto 2017.”
Marjorie Boulton, born May 7 1924, died August 30 2017