Philip Youngman Carter
| Margery Allingham | |
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| Born | Margery Louise Allingham 20 May 1904 Ealing, London, UK |
| Died | 30 June 1966 (aged 62) Colchester, Essex, England, UK |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Genre | mystery, crime fiction |
Margery Louise Allingham (20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English writer of detective fiction, best remembered for her "golden age" stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.
Margery Allingham was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a family immersed in literature. Her father, Herbert, and her mother, Emily Jane (née Hughes), were both writers; Herbert was editor of the Christian Globe and The New London Journal (to which Margery later contributed articles and Sexton Blake stories), before becoming a successful pulp fiction writer, while Emily Jane was a contributor of stories to women's magazines. Soon after Margery's birth, the family left London for Essex, where they lived in an old house in Layer Breton, a village near Colchester. She attended a local school and then the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, all the while writing stories and plays; she earned her first fee at the age of eight, for a story printed in her aunt's magazine.
Upon returning to London in 1920, she studied drama and speech training at Regent Street Polytechnic, which cured a stammer she had suffered since childhood; it was at this time that she first met her future husband, Philip Youngman Carter. In 1927, she married Carter, who collaborated with her and designed the jackets for many of her books. They lived on the edge of the Essex Marshes in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, near Maldon.
Her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, was published in 1923 when she was 19. It was allegedly based on a story she heard during a séance, though later in life this was debunked by her husband. Nevertheless, Allingham continued to include occult themes in many novels. Blackkerchief Dick was well received, but was not a financial success. She wrote several plays in this period, and attempted to write a serious novel, but finding her themes clashed with her natural light-heartedness, she decided instead to try the mystery genre.
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