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Elizabeth Ferrars : Sequence of Events and Other Stories

Eurographica, Helsinki, 1989

ISBN 9519371559

8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. CU3 - A signed limited edition paperback book SIGNED and dated by Elizabeth Ferrars on the title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket. Dust jacket has wrinkling, chipping, crease and some small tears on the top edges, dust jacket and book have some bumped corners and light shelf wear. Mystery and Spy Authors in Signed Limited Edition 12. This book, edited by Rolando Pieraccini, has been printed in 350 copies by Tipografia Nobili, established in Pesaro in 1823. on special Michelangelo paper made at the Magnani Paper Mills in Pescia, Italy. All the copies are numbered and signed by the author. Printing completed in November 1989. Copy n. 168. Scatter His Ashes (1970) / Under Influence (1974) / Sequence of Events (1977) / Justice In My Own Hands (1988). 8.25"x5.75", 117 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Elizabeth Ferrars, born Morna Doris MacTaggart, was a British crime writer. She was born in Rangoon (currently Yangon), Burma into a Scottish timber and rice-trading family. Her early years were in the hands of a German nanny, and the initial intention was that she should be sent to Berlin to complete her education. The deteriorating political climate between Britain and Germany led to her moving to Britain instead at the age of six. She attended Bedales School from 1918 to 1924. She claimed in later years that she never would have been able to write crime novels if she had not learned German as a child from her nanny, the rigorous sentence structure and complex rules of grammar being an indispensable preparation for the architecture of a crime thriller. Unable to study English Literature, because she was never taught Latin or Greek, she took a diploma in journalism at London University (1925-1928), and wrote two novels under her own name in the early 1930s. It was at this time that she met and married her first husband. Around 1940, she met a lecturer in Botany at Bedford College, Dr (later Professor) Robert Brown, and the same year her first crime novel, Give a Corpse a Bad Name, was published. She separated from her first husband and lived with Robert Brown in Belsize Park, London, from 1942. However, she did not obtain a divorce and marry Brown until October 1945. She remained on friendly terms with her first husband, who also remarried. In 1951 she and her new husband moved to Cornell University in the USA, where her husband had been offered a post. Notwithstanding the financial attraction of such a posting in austerity postwar Britain, they returned a year later owing to the atmosphere of McCarthyism. Having seen the rise of fascism in Europe, they were disturbed by the "witch-hunts" against many writers and academics accused of communist sympathies. In 1953, she became one of the founding members of the Crime Writers' Association (she was its chair in 1977). She was inducted into the famed Detection Club in 1958. From 1957, when her husband was appointed Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Edinburgh, until shortly after his retirement in 1977, they lived in Edinburgh. Citing the long, cold winters as a reason, they then moved south to the village of Blewbury in Oxfordshire, where they lived until her sudden death in 1995. She professed no religious faith and was probably instrumental in turning her husband from distinct evangelism in the 1930s towards agnosticism. She was buried in Blewbury in a non-religious ceremony. Her final novel, A Thief in the Night, was published posthumously in 1995. She was survived by a nephew, Peter MacTaggart. In the United States, her novels were published under the name E.X. Ferrars, her US publishers assuring her that "the 'X' would 'do it'". Ferrars was in fact her mother's maiden name. Though the majority of Ferrars's works are standalone novels, she wrote several series. Her first five novels all feature Toby Dyke, a freelance journalist, and his companion, George, who uses several surnames and is implied to be a former criminal. Late in her career, she began writing about a semi-estranged married couple, Virginia and Felix Freer, and a retired botanist, Andrew Basnett. Several of her short stories also feature an elderly detective called Jonas P. Jonas. Her extraordinary output owes a great deal to considerable self-discipline and diligent method. Her plots were worked out in detail in hand-written notebooks before being filled out in typed manuscript; she said that they were worked backwards from the denouement. Like every writer, she based characters and situations on people she knew and things she had seen in real life. She travelled with her husband when his academic career required, for example to Adelaide where he was a visiting professor at the University of South Australia, and on holidays specially to Madeira, which they loved. Her books are written so that readers are spared from violence or extreme unpleasantness. Due to their backgrounds, her characters do not expect crime or violence to impinge on their lives. They are educated, and often work in academic or artistic fields. Female characters are independent and "politely feminist.". Book Condition: Very Good. Binding: Paperback. Jacket: Very Good

Limited Edition
Signed by Author

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