Edith Pargeter

OBE BEM
Edith Pargeter in 1995
Edith Pargeter in 1995
BornEdith Mary Pargeter
(1913-09-28)September 28, 1913
Horsehay, Shropshire, England
DiedOctober 14, 1995(1995-10-14) (aged 82)
Madeley, Shropshire, England
Pen nameEllis Peters; John Redfern; Jolyon Carr; Peter Benedict
OccupationAuthor
CitizenshipBritish
EducationDawley Church of England School; Coalbrookdale High School for Girls
Period1936–1990s
Genrehistorical fiction; mysteries; nonfiction works about Shrewsbury; translations from Czech
Notable works"The Brother Cadfael Chronicles"; the George Felse mysteries; the "Heaven Tree" trilogy
Notable awardsOBE; British Crime Writers Association; Mystery Writers of America

Edith Mary Pargeter OBE BEM (28 September 1913 – 14 October 1995),[1] also known by her pen name Ellis Peters, was an English author of works in many categories, especially history and historical fiction, and was also honoured for her translations of Czech classics. She is probably best known for her murder mysteries, both historical and modern, and especially for her medieval detective series The Cadfael Chronicles.

Personal

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Pargeter was born in the village of Horsehay (Shropshire, England), daughter of Edmund Valentine Pargeter (known as Ted) and his wife Edith nee Hordley. Her father was a clerk at the local Horsehay Company ironworks. She later moved with her parents to Dawley where she was educated at Dawley Church of England School and the old Coalbrookdale High School for Girls.[2][3] She had Welsh ancestry, and many of her short stories and books (both fiction and non-fiction) are set in Wales and its borderlands, or have Welsh protagonists.

After leaving school she worked as a temporary labour exchange clerk, then as an assistant at a chemist's shop in Dawley, during which time her first novel, Hortensius, Friend of Nero, was published in 1936.[4][2] During World War II, she enlisted in the Women's Royal Naval Service (the "Wrens") in 1940. She worked in an administrative role as a teleprinter operator at Devonport, and then at the Western Approaches Headquarters at Derby House, Liverpool. She reached the rank of petty officer by 1 January 1944 when she was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the New Year Honours.[5][2]

In 1947 Pargeter visited Czechoslovakia in a Workers' Educational Association party and became fascinated by the Czech language and culture. She wrote two books about then-Czechoslovakia: "The Fair Young Phoenix" and "The Coast of Bohemia".[6] She became fluent in Czech and published award-winning translations of Czech poetry and prose into English.[4][2] She translated books by Jan Neruda, Božena Němcová, and Karel Hynek Mácha, as well as books by 20th-century writers such as Bohumil Hrabal, Ivan Klíma, Ladislav Vančura, and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, the poet Jaroslav Seifert.[6]

She was an active Labour Party supporter until, with her brother Ellis Pargeter (a local councillor in Dawley), she left the party in 1949 because they believed that it had deserted socialist principles.[2]

Writing career

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She devoted the rest of her life to writing, both nonfiction and well-researched fiction. She never attended university but became a self-taught scholar in areas that interested her, especially Shropshire and Wales. Birmingham University gave her an honorary master's degree. She never married, but did fall in love with a Czech man. She remained friends with him after he married another woman.[7] She was pleased that she could support herself with her writing from the time after the Second World War until her death.[7]

Pargeter wrote under a number of pseudonyms; it was under the name Ellis Peters that she wrote her later crime stories, especially the highly popular series of Brother Cadfael medieval mysteries, featuring a Benedictine monk at the Abbey in Shrewsbury. That pseudonym was drawn from the name of her brother, Ellis, and a version of the name of the daughter of friends, Petra.[7] Many of the novels were made into films for television. Although she won her first award for a novel written in 1963, her greatest fame and sales came with the Cadfael Chronicles, which began in 1977. At the time that the 19th novel was published, sales of the series exceeded 6.5 million.[7] The Cadfael Chronicles drew international attention to Shrewsbury and its history, and greatly increased tourism to the town. In an interview in 1993, she mentioned her own work before the Second World War as a chemist's assistant, where they prepared many of the compounds they sold. "We used to make bottled medicine that we compounded specially, with ingredients like gentian, rosemary, horehound. You never see that nowadays; those tinctures are never prescribed. They often had bitters of some sort in them, a taste I rather liked. Some of Cadfael's prescriptions come out of those years."[8]

Her Cadfael novels show great appreciation for the ideals of medieval Catholic Christianity, but also a recognition of its weaknesses, such as quarrels over the finer points of theology (The Heretic's Apprentice), and the desire of the church to own more and more land and wealth (Monk's Hood, Saint Peter's Fair, The Rose Rent).

Later life

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In 1992 her mobility began to decline after a fall during a service being televised for Songs of Praise at Shrewsbury Abbey. She had a further fall in 1994 at home that led to the amputation of a leg at Princess Royal Hospital, Telford.[2]

She died at her last home in Glendinning Way, Madeley, Shropshire, in October 1995 at the age of 82, having recently returned home from hospital following a stroke. On 14 September 1997, a new stained glass window depicting St Benedict was installed in Shrewsbury Abbey and was dedicated to the memory of Edith Pargeter, with funds raised by donations from admirers of the author.

She is remembered in her home town with a residential road named after her. Ellis Peters Drive sits off Southall Road between Aqueduct and Brookside in Telford.

[9][10][11][2]

Recognition

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The Mystery Writers of America gave Pargeter their Edgar Award in 1963 for Death and the Joyful Woman. In 1980, the British Crime Writers Association awarded her the Silver Dagger for Monk's Hood. In 1993 she won the Cartier Diamond Dagger, an annual award given by the CWA to authors who have made an outstanding lifetime contribution to the field of crime and mystery writing. Pargeter was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to Literature" in the 1994 New Year Honours.[12] To commemorate Pargeter's life and work, in 1999 the CWA established their Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award (later called the Ellis Peters Historical Award) for the best historical crime novel of the year.[13][14]

Pargeter's Cadfael Chronicles are often credited for popularizing what would later become known as the historical mystery.[15][16]

Bibliography

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As Edith Pargeter

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Jim Benison a.k.a. The Second World War Trilogy

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The Heaven Tree Trilogy

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The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet

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Four novels about Llewelyn the Last:

Other

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Non-fiction
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Short stories

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Brambleridge Tales

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Others

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As Ellis Peters

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George Felse and Family

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Brother Cadfael

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Others

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As John Redfern

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As Jolyon Carr

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Novels

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Uncollected short stories

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As Peter Benedict

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Explanatory notes

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  1. ^ This and other First Edition offerings indicate 1983 for the Macmillan edition[19]

References

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  1. ^ "Edith Pargeter, 82; Author of Mysteries". The New York Times. 16 October 1995. p. B7.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "Great Lives: From working-class roots to literary fame". Shropshire Star. 27 December 2021. pp. 20, 29.Article by Toby Neal, part of series on West Midlands worthies.
  3. ^ "Edith Pargeter, author". Goodreads. Retrieved 18 May 2016.
  4. ^ a b "In Profile: Edith Pargeter". BBC - Shropshire. July 2008. Retrieved 5 December 2013.
  5. ^ "No. 36309". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1943. p. 28.
  6. ^ a b "Edith Pargeter: an English novelist in Prague". Radio Prague International. 1 October 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  7. ^ a b c d Biederman, Patricia Ward (18 March 1993). "A Woman of Mystery : Fans Sleuth Out the English Creator of Tales of a Medieval Monk". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
  8. ^ Cranch, Robbie (January 1993). "Mystery in the Garden: Interview with Ellis Peters". Mother Earth Living. Topeka, Kansas. Retrieved 18 May 2016.
  9. ^ "Visit Shrewsbury". Archived from the original on 9 May 2008.
  10. ^ "Shrewsbury Abbey". Shrewsbury, the original one-off. Retrieved 18 May 2016.
  11. ^ "The Literator: INSIDE PUBLISHING". The Independent. 6 July 1997. Retrieved 18 May 2016.
  12. ^ "No. 53527". The London Gazette. 30 December 1993. p. 13.
  13. ^ "The CWA Dagger Awards". theCWA.co.uk. Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
  14. ^ "The CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger". theCWA.co.uk. Archived from the original on 7 November 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  15. ^ Picker, Lenny (3 March 2010). "Mysteries of History". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
  16. ^ Rivkin Jr., David B. (27 February 2010). "Five Best Historical Mystery Novels". WSJ.com. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 4 December 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  17. ^ "Legends of Old Bohemia". Goodreads.com.
  18. ^ "The Sanctuary Sparrow". 1982.
  19. ^ Russell, Richard (13 November 2009). First Edition of The Sanctuary Sparrow. F+W Media. ISBN 9781440221750.
  20. ^ "The Hermit of Eyton Forest".
  21. ^ "Shropshire". Sutton Publishing. Retrieved 27 May 2016.

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