A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
|
|||
|
Date
and Place of birth: |
|||
|
Life and Works: Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, is an English writer of crime fiction, under the name P. D. James, and is a life peer in the British House of Lords and a Commander of the British Empire from 1992. She was born Phyllis Dorothy James on August 3, 1920, in Oxford, England, the oldest of three children. Her parents, Sidney Victor, a tax official, and Dorothy May (Hone) James, moved the family to Cambridge, where James attended the Cambridge High School for Girls. One of this century's foremost crime novelists had to leave school at age 16 to work in a tax office, followed by a stint as assistant stage manager for the Festival Theatre in Cambridge. (Her own play A Private Treason was staged in 1985 in London's West End.) Together with Ruth Rendell, P.D. James is one of the most famous British mystery writers. She wrote in the tradition of the British crime storyteller, but her extensive explorations of relationships, motivations, and meanings of justice classified her, in the opinion of some, as a novelist. James did not begin writing until she reached her thirties. Her first novel, Cover Her Face, featuring the investigator/poet Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard, was published in 1962. She has said that her influences include Jane Austen, Dorothy L. Sayers (herself a well-known British author of mysteries), Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. Cover Her Face was followed during this period by A Mind to Murder (1963) and Unnatural Causes (1967). She co-authored with Thomas A. Critchley The Maul and the Pear Tree (1971), a recounting of a real life murder from the annals of 19th-century London. However unlike most series, James seems to use her main character just for the needs of the story and not vice versa. She has also written two books starring PI Cordelia Gray but her most successful novel to date is her non-series book Innocent Blood. Many of James's mystery novels take place against the backdrop of the UK's vast bureaucracies such as the criminal justice system and the health services, arenas in which James honed her skills for decades starting in the 1940s when she went to work in hospital administration to help support her ailing husband and two children. During World War II she worked as a Red Cross nurse and for the Ministry of Food. On August 8, 1941, she married Ernest Connor Bantry White of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and in 1942 and 1944 gave birth to their daughters, Claire and Jane. When White returned from the war in 1945, he was suffering from schizophrenia and frequently had to be hospitalized. He was unemployable, leaving her to provide for their family until his death in 1964. Two years after the publication of Cover Her Face, James's husband died and she took a position as a civil servant within the criminal section of the Department of Home Affairs. James worked in government service until her retirement in 1979, and her many years of experience within these bureaucracies add a complex stratum of insider's knowledge to her writing. Not until 1979 would she devote herself to full-time authorship. Her 2001 work, Death in Holy Orders, displays an insightful grasp of the inner workings of church hierarchy: she is a devout Anglican, and this comes through in many of her works. James's work experience is reflected in her novels, providing convincing backgrounds for both the medical establishment and police procedure. The setitbusngs of four of her mysteries are in medicine-related facilities: a psychiatric clinic in A Mind to Murder, a nurses' training school in Shroud for a Nightingale (1971), a private home for the disabled in The Black Tower (1975), and a forensic science laboratory in Death of an Expert Witness (1977). On the other hand, she probed for motivations; explored relationships between even relatively minor characters and within individual characters; raised complex questions about guilt and innocence, about the adequacy and ultimate justice of legal assumptions and processes, about religion; and explored the resonance of setitbusng of significant landmarks, of the individual's tellingly personal surroundings. The James canon of novels, with the exception of Innocent Blood, involves either Adam Dalgliesh or Cordelia Gray, a struggling young private detective introduced in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972). In addition to the individual mysteries, the Dalgliesh and Gray biographies, tantalizingly interwoven, unfold from book to book. Dalgliesh, who is also a published poet, has risen from chief inspector to commander of the Special Squad, newly formed in A Taste for Death (1986). P. D. James is the author of nineteen books, most of which have been filmed and broadcast on television in the United States and other countries. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. In 2000 she celebrated her eightieth birthday and published her autobiography, Time to be in Earnest. The recipient of many prizes and honors, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991. She lives in London and Oxford. James also published a number of short stories in such mystery collections as Winter's Crimes, Ellery Queen's Murder Menu, and Ellery Queen's Masters of Mystery. P. D. James has won many awards: "Silver Dagger" 1971 for Shroud for a Nightingale; "Silver Dagger" 1975 for The Black Tower; "Silver Dagger " 1986 and "International Macavity Award" for Best Novel in 1987 for A Taste for Death; "Diamond Dagger" 1987; "Grand Master Award" 1999. In 1983 she was named Officer of the Order of the British Empire. PD James has also recently been nominated peer in the House of Lords taking the name of Baroness James of Holland Park. |
|
||
|
Selected works:
|
|||
|
|||
Download here our book search engines