Margery Lawrence
| Margery Lawrence | |
|---|---|
| Born | 8 August 1889 Wolverhampton, England |
| Died | 13 November 1969 London |
| Occupation | writer |
| Nationality | English |
| Period | 1913 - 1969 |
| Genre | Fantasy fiction, Horror fiction, Detective fiction |
Margery Lawrence (8 August 1889 – 13 November 1969) (pseudonym of Mrs. Arthur E. Towle) was an English romantic fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction and detective fiction author who specialized in ghost stories.
She was born Margery Harriet Lawrence, in Wolverhampton. Her father was solicitor Richard J. Lawrence, her mother was called Grace, and she had at least two siblings Allan and Monica. Her father published her early poetry in Songs of Childhood, and Other Verses, in 1913.
Lawrence was also an illustrator, and producing drawings for The Hills of Ruel, and Other Stories (1921) by Fiona MacLeod.
Her earliest collections, the Round Table sequence, include Nights of the Round Table (1926) and The Terraces of Night (1932). Stefan Dziemianowicz describes these stories as "simple but solidly told tales of horror and the supernatural that are mindful of the classic ghost story tradition but adorned with enough contemporary flourishes" to demonstrate that Lawrence was comfortable working variants on this tradition. These stories often appeared in British pulp magazines such as The Sovereign Magazine and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story prior to book publication.
During the 1920s she wrote general fiction, and her 1925 romance novel Red Heels was filmed by the Austrian film company Sascha Film as Das Spielzeug von Paris. A list of Lawrence's published novels to 1945 includes: Miss Brand—Adventuress; Red Heels; Bohemian Glass; Drums of Youth; Silken Sarah; The Madonna of Seven Moons; Madam Holle; The Crooked Smile; Overture to Life; The Bridge of Wonder; and Step Light, Lady.
In 1941, she published another collection of short fiction, Strange Caravan (Robert Hale, 1941). A list of her short stories to 1945 also includes: Snapdragon; and The Floating Cafe.
Her best-known supernatural works include Number Seven, Queer Street (Robert Hale, 1945), a collection that purports to be the case histories of an occult detective, Dr Miles Pennoyer, as related by his assistant Jerome Latimer. Lawrence stated that this series was inspired by Algernon Blackwood's John Silence stories and Dion Fortune's Dr. Taverner series. Like May Sinclair before her, Lawrence became a confirmed spiritualist and believer in reincarnation in later years, and her book is heavy with didactic occultist dialogue. Another well-known supernatural volume is Master of Shadows (1959).
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