Margery Allingham

20 May 1904 - 30 June 1966

Standard Name: Allingham, Margery

Birth Name: Margery Louise Allingham

Married Name: Margery Louise Carter

Pseudonym: Louise A.

Pseudonym: Maxwell March

MA , best-known as a detective writer of the earlier twentieth century, was highly professional in her reliance on her craft to make her an income. Though she called herself a slow worker, her exceptional rate of productivity almost never slackened. She drew a distinction between right-hand writing (serious books written to please herself) and left-hand writing in genres undertaken purely to keep her household afloat.

Martin, Richard, 1934 -. Ink in Her Blood: The Life and Crime Fiction of Margery Allingham. UMI Research Press, 1988.

xiii

After setting out with plays, she wrote mainly novels, with serialised fiction, stories, reviews, and occasionally lectures. Repeatedly she stated that now at last she was moving away from the mere thriller towards the detective story or mystery, or away from the detective towards the straight, serious novel. Always working with speed and facility, she seems always to have regarded the attainment of real authorship with a kind of awe.

Martin, Richard, 1934 -. Ink in Her Blood: The Life and Crime Fiction of Margery Allingham. UMI Research Press, 1988.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Birth	William Allingham	WA , poet and editor (no relation to the later detective-story writer Margery Allingham ), was born at Ballyshannon in Donegal. The Concise Dictionary of National Biography: From Earliest Times to 1985. Oxford University Press, 1992, 3 vols. Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Intertextuality and Influence	P. D. James	PDJ followed the English tradition of detective-story writing that has continued from the 1920s and 1930s, a genre in which many women have held dominant positions. She spoke of her adolescent reading as influenced in...
Literary responses	Alison Uttley	This book pleased some prestigious critics. Although the New Statesman was rather sniffy and the New English Weekly hostile, Margery Allingham in Time and Tide called it enchanting. Humbert Wolfe in the Observer said...
Literary responses	Edith Templeton	Anita Brookner notes that many reviewers felt this book to be in bad taste, a world away from such entertaining hits of this year as Margery Allingham 's Tiger in the Smoke, Nancy Spain
Literary responses	Mary Stewart	This novel was welcomed by fellow novelists. In the TLS advertisement that heralded it, Daphne du Maurier called it a brave start and Patricia Wentwortha delightful work; cultured and charming, besides being very exciting...
Literary responses	Ngaio Marsh	A review of detective novels in The Times (subtitled Deadlier than the Male) invoked the proud position of women among writers of this genre, citing Dorothy L. Sayers , Agatha Christie , Margery Allingham
Publishing	Mary Stewart	This work was serialized in Woman's Journal before book publication. An American edition appeared in 1955. TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive. 2769 (25 February 1955): 124 OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999. MS took her title from a folk-song which runs: Madam, will you walk? /...
Publishing	Dorothy L. Sayers	Reviews which DLS wrote for the Sunday Times during the 1930s allowed her to comment on most of her fellow crime-writers, notably Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie . She provided introductions for volumes of short...
Textual Features	Georgette Heyer	Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway make their first appearances here. They become series characters in Heyer's next four detective novels: Behold, Here's Poison! (1936), They Found Him Dead (1937), A Blunt Instrument (1938), and No...
Textual Production	Theodora Benson	In 1942 Peter Cheyney included one of these, the fairly typical Harry was Good to the Girls, in Stories of the Underworld. The only other woman among the twenty-one contributors was Margery Allingham .
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Agatha Christie	Although AC was supposed to be writing propaganda, her opinions on her own chosen genre were too strong to be muzzled. Having begun with praise of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , John Dickson Carr ...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Eudora Welty	Those reviewed include Margery Allingham Carter , Sylvia Townsend Warner , Virginia Woolf , Rose Macaulay , Colette , Isak Dinesen , Elizabeth Bowen , Katherine Anne Porter , and EW 's close friend Ken Millar
Wealth and Poverty	Georgette Heyer	GH was to have trouble with the Inspector of Taxes and with money throughout the rest of her life. (This was a period when the British tax system was peculiarly unfriendly to those with high...

Timeline

5 January 1924

An article by publisher T. Fisher Unwin in The Publishers' Circular predicted that cinema would help to increase book sales, suggesting that film has produced a new and larger public, though of a lower grade.

McAleer, Joseph. Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain 1914-1950. Clarendon Press, 1992.

64-5

23 November 1946

Margery Allingham wrote from Britain to a friend in the USA, Things are really bad here this winter. No one is well fed which is to say that most people are reminded that they are...

Texts

Allingham, Margery. Black Plumes. Heinemann, 1940.

Allingham, Margery. Blackkerchief Dick. Hodder and Stoughton, 1923.

Allingham, Margery, and Philip Youngman Carter. Cargo of Eagles. Chatto and Windus, 1968.

Allingham, Margery. Coroner’s Pidgin. Heinemann, 1945.

Allingham, Margery. Dance of the Years. Michael Joseph, 1943.

Allingham, Margery. Dancers in Mourning. Heinemann, 1937.

Allingham, Margery. Death of a Ghost. Heinemann, 1934.

Allingham, Margery. Flowers for the Judge. Heinemann, 1936.

Allingham, Margery. Hide My Eyes. Chatto and Windus, 1958.

Allingham, Margery. Look to the Lady. Heinemann, 1931.

Allingham, Margery. “Margery Allingham: An Introduction”. The Return of Mr Campion, edited by Jack Eric Morpurgo, Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton, 1989, p. vii - xix.

Allingham, Margery. More Work for the Undertaker. Heinemann, 1949.

Allingham, Margery. Mystery Mile. Heinemann, 1930.

Allingham, Margery. No Love Lost. Macfaddem Books, Macfadden-Bartell Corporation, 1962.

Allingham, Margery. Police at the Funeral. Heinemann, 1931.

Allingham, Margery. Sweet Danger. Heinemann, 1933.

Allingham, Margery. The Beckoning Lady. Chatto and Windus, 1955.

Allingham, Margery. The Case of the Late Pig. Hodder and Stoughton, 1937.

Allingham, Margery. The China Governess. Chatto and Windus, 1963.

Allingham, Margery. The Crime at Black Dudley. Heinemann, 1929.

Allingham, Margery. The Fashion in Shrouds. Heinemann, 1938.

Allingham, Margery. The Mind Readers. Morrow, 1965.

Allingham, Margery. The Mysterious Mr. Campion. Chatto and Windus, 1963.

Allingham, Margery. The Oaken Heart. Michael Joseph, 1941.

Allingham, Margery. The Return of Mr. Campion. Editor Morpurgo, Jack Eric, Hodder and Stoughton, 1989.