Butts was born on 13 December 1890 in
Poole,
Dorset, the daughter of Mary Jane (née Briggs) and Captain Frederick John Butts. She had a younger brother, Anthony. In later life she and her brother were estranged. Her great-grandfather was
Thomas Butts, the friend of
William Blake, the poet and artist. In 1906 her mother sold the Blake paintings and in 1907 remarried. From 1909 to 1912 Mary studied at
Westfield College in London, where she first became aware of her bisexual feelings. She did not complete a degree there, but was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races. She went on to study at the London School of Economics, from which she graduated in 1914. She became a student of the
occultist Aleister Crowley. She and other students worked with Crowley on his
Magick (Book 4) (1912) and were given co-authorship credit. In 1916, she began keeping the diary which she would maintain until the year of her death. In the first years of
World War I, she was living in London, undertaking social work for the
London County Council in
Hackney Wick, and in a lesbian relationship. She then met the modernist poet,
John Rodker, a pacifist at that time hiding in
Dorking with fellow poet and pacifist
Robert Trevelyan. In May 1918 she married Rodker, and in November 1920 gave birth to their daughter, Camilla Elizabeth. Butts also adopted Rodker's pacifism. who illustrated her book,
Imaginary Letters (1928). In mid-1921 she and Maitland spent about twelve weeks at
Aleister Crowley's
Abbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices there shocking, and came away with a drug habit. In 1922 and 1923 she and Maitland spent periods near
Tyneham, Dorset, and her novels of the 1920s make much of the Dorset landscape. In 1923 her book of stories,
Speed the Plough and other stories was published; which was followed in 1925 by her first novel,
Ashe of Rings (published by
Robert McAlmon).
Ashe of Rings is an anti-war novel with supernatural elements. In 1927, she and Rodker were divorced. In 1928, Butts published
Armed with Madness a novel featuring experimental
Modernist writing revolving around the
Grail legend. In 1930, she married the homosexual artist, William Park "Gabriel" Atkin or Aitken (1897–1937) (Mary then styled herself Mrs Aitken, but retained her maiden name for her writings). After a time in London and Newcastle, they settled in 1932 at
Sennen on the
Penwith peninsula on the western tip of
Cornwall, but by 1934 the marriage had failed. Butts was an ardent advocate of
nature conservation, and attacked the pollution of the English countryside in her pamphlets
Warning To Hikers and
Traps For Unbelievers. ==Legacy==