Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Byrne, Mrs. William Pitt
BYRNE, Mrs. William Pitt, second daughter of the late Hans Busk, Esq., of Great Cumberland Place, and widow of William Pitt-Byrne, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, proprietor of the Morning Post, an elegant scholar and a man of high literary attainments, artistic tastes, and musical proficiency. Mrs. Pitt-Byrne contributed at an early age to many of the principal periodicals of the day, but always anonymously. One of her contributions to Fraser was a detailed and comprehensive history of Montagu House, which appeared in four numbers of that Magazine: a companion-paper of much research, on the Hôtel de Carnavalet was published in the People's, and, among others, in Macmillan, an interesting description of the archives of the Préfecture de Police, since burnt by the Communards. Mrs. Pitt-Byrne wrote for Once a Week, and contributed (July, 1866) a scholarly and poetical paper called "The Grotto of Vaucluse." The first volume she published, "A Glance behind the Grilles," appeared in 1854. It was followed by several others; the most popular being, perhaps, the well-known volume of "Flemish Interiors" and it is as the "Author of Flemish Interiors" that this writer has always since presented her productions to the public. Her other works, all very favourably and generally known, bear on them the unmistakable stamp of artistic and literary culture; those of a social and descriptive character have been illustrated by her own pencil. They comprise, besides those above named—"Realities of Paris Life," 8 vols.; "Red, White, and Blue," 3 vols.; "Undercurrents Overlooked," 2 vols.; "Cosas de España," 2 vols.; "Feudal Castles of France;" "Gheel, or the City of the Simple;" "The Beggynhof, or the City of the Single;" "Sainte Perrine, or the City of the Gentle;" "Pictures of Hungarian Life;" and "Curiosities of the Search-room." Mrs. Pitt-Byrne has for many years written musical, dramatic, and literary critiques for several daily and weekly papers, and has also supplied paragraphs and papers of interest of another class to the columns of Land and Water.