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
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Life and Works: Ruth Barbara Rendell, who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is a British best-selling mystery and psychological crime writer, often called the Queen of Crime. She is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has received many awards for her work, including the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Born in London on February 17, 1930, the daughter of teachers, Ruth (Barbara), née Grasemann. Her father had come from a poor background, originally labouring in Plymouth dockyard , before acquiring a university education and becoming a science and mathematics teacher. Her maternal grandparents were a Dane and a Swede, who came to England from Copenhagen in 1905. Her mother had been born in Sweden and raised in Denmark, but developed multiple sclerosis soon after the birth of her daughter. After completing her education at Loughton County High School, Ruth Rendell worked as a journalist for Essex newspapers. In 1950, at the age of twenty, she married journalist, Donald Rendell, and ceased working for two years following the birth of their only son (1953). For nearly a decade she was a housewife and unpublished writer, attempting numerous genres before arriving at the detective story more or less by chance. Finally, in 1964, her first crime novel was published, From Doon with Death, and the character of detective Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, set in Kingsmarkham, a fictional English town, was introduced. Reginald Wexford is shrewd, compassionate, witty and solid - untroubled by the personal aggravations of other chief inspectors. His family life is stable and comfortable (his wife a dependable asset, his daughters offering only a bit of aggravation occasionally), his job is not in any danger from jealous or domineering collegues, so he is freer than most literary detectives to concentrate on Rendell's involved and very complex crimes. Since her first novel, Ruth Rendell has demonstrated a keen fascination with the collision between society and the individual, particularly where circumstances drive the individual to behaviour that society regards as somehow abnormal. Parallel to her Wexford procedurals are Rendell's psychological crime novels wherein she explores themes such as sexual obsession, the effects of misperceived communication, chance and the humanness of criminals, in books such as Judgment in Stone, Live Flesh, Talking to Strange Men, The Killing Doll, Going Wrong, and Adam and Eve and Pinch Me. She divorced Donald in 1975, she remarried him in 1977. From then on, until his death, they continued living together on a remote estate near the Suffolk village of Polstead. Rendell created a third strand of writing with the publication of A Dark Adapted Eye under her pseudonym Barbara Vine in 1986. She took her second Christian name, which is Barbara, and her great-grandmother's maiden name, which is Vine. Her 'Vine' books were a great success. The Vine titles are 3 or 4 times the length of the others, and 3 or 4 times as complex, generally spanning multiple generations, with the root of the crimes eventually uncovered in a long buried past. Books such as King Solomon's Carpet, A Fatal Inversion and Anna's Book inhabit the same territory as her psychological crime novels while they further develop themes of family misunderstandings and the side effects of secrets kept and crimes done. Rendell is famous for her elegant prose and sharp insights into the human mind, as well as her ability to create cogent plots and characters. Rendell has also injected the social changes of the last 40 years into her work, bringing awareness to such issues as domestic violence and the change in the status of women. The Blood Doctor (2002) is a psychological novel based on the diaries of Lord Henry of Nanther, Queen Victoria's physician. Several of her works have been adapted for film and television, including The Tree of Hands and the Pedro Almodovar film Live Flesh. Her books have been translated into twenty-two languages and are also published to great acclaim in the United States. She lives in London and her commitment to politics and the creation of a better and more equal society was recognised last year with her elevation to the House of Lords where she sits as a working peer with the title Baroness Rendell of Babergh. Prizes and awards:
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