Braymer, Marjorie (L)

Marjorie Braymer (1911–1988) was a teacher, editor and latterly a writer of children’s books. She was the author of a book^[198] that reviewed the development of the Atlantis story from Plato to the discovery of America and the subsequent identification of it with Atlantis. She then shows how the American location lost favour and attention shifted to the Atlantic, a view brought to great prominence by Ignatius Donnelly. In time our improved knowledge of geology gradually undermined the acceptability of Donnelly’s view and so in the middle of the 20^th century attention shifted further east to the Mediterranean with the discovery of Minoan remains under a mass of volcanic ash on ancient Thera, now Santorini, that seemed to match Plato’s lost civilisation in many respects. Braymer devoted more than a quarter of her book to the subject and concluded that it was highly probable that Thera had been Atlantis.

The book was written over a quarter of a century ago and as a consequence could not take account of more recent developments such as the Maltese, Sardinian and Egyptian location theories.

Although Braymer’s very informative book is primarily intended for young adult readers, it is quite adequate as an introduction to the Minoan Hypothesis for a wider audience.