When I was oh, 13 or 14 (how I wish I'd started keeping a journal when I was that young, as I'd love to be remember the first time I read this or that book, saw this or that play or movie, etc.) I first read Elizabeth Peter's The Murders of Richard III - in which a group of enthusiasts who believe in Richard's innocence of the murder of his nephews in the Tower of London, foregather in an English country house to have a simple meeting, only to have sinister happenigs spoil their fun...but delight the reader, of course.
In that book, Peters mentions Josephine Tey's book The Daughter of Time, and since I had convened a fascination for Richard after reading her book, I next sought out The Daughter of Time, and liked that too. (Truth is the daughter of time.) After that, I read all of Tey's books. Although Wikipedia wasn't available at that time, the much-lamented Armchair Detective was - and it was for sale at my local book store devoted to selling used mysteries - Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore in Minneapolis, MN.
And one of those issues had an article about Elizabeth McIntosh, who used Josephine Tey as one of her two pseudonyms, so I knew the info that Wikipedia presents, if you check that source today:
She was born in Inverness, Scotland on July 25, 1896 and died from cancer on February 13, 1952.
She attended a physical training college in Birmingham, before becoming a teacher. However, her literary career began only when she was forced to give up regular work in order to care for her invalid father.
The most famous of her five mystery novels is The Daughter of Time, in which Grant, laid up in hospital, has friends research reference books and contemporary documents so that he can puzzle out the mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Grant comes to the firm conclusion that King Richard was totally innocent of the death of the Princes.
The Daughter of Time was the last of her books published during her lifetime. A further crime novel, The Singing Sands, was found in her papers and published posthumously. After her death, proceeds from her estate, including royalties from her books, were assigned to the National Trust.
As Gordon Daviot she wrote about a dozen one-act plays and another dozen full-length plays, but only four of them were produced during her lifetime. Richard of Bordeaux was particularly successful, running for fourteen months and making a household name of its young leading man and director, John Gielgud.
Tey is mentioned in the 1982 Stephen King novella, Apt Pupil.
Tey appears as a main character in An Expert In Murder (Faber 2008) by Nicola Upson, a detective story woven around the original production of Richard of Bordeaux. The second novel in the series, Angel with Two Faces, was published in 2009; further novels are planned.
Angel With Two Faces is not yet available in the US, however, I hadn't known about Expert in Murder at all, until I read the wikipedia article in preparation for what will be my entry tomorrow - a Dated Death compendium for A Shilling For Candles.
The film rights for A Shilling For Candles, published in 1936, were purchased by Alfred Hitchcock, and it was turned into Young and Innocent, a fun little film that nevertheless had very little in common with its source material.
I started reading the book last night, and as it was published in 1936, and in England, there are lots of references that now, almost 75 years later, may not be apparently to the casual American reader. Hence, my Dated Death project, in which I annotate these books so that modern readers can more fully enjoy them. Of course, all books, dated or otherwise, are enjoyable, one can understand what's meant in the context of the paragraph, of course, but it does add a certain je ne sais quois to know the exact meaning of the reference or phrase used.
So look for that tomorrow, for A Shilling For Candles.
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