Ngaio was educated at St Margaret's College, Christchurch, New Zealand, and the Canterbury College School of Art, before becoming an actress around 1916. She kept up her devotion to the theatre and the world of art all her life. From 1928, she divided her time between her native New Zealand and the UK. London was more metropolitan, but her heart was in New Zealand.
Ngaio Marsh is best known now for thirty-two detective novels featuring Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, which appeared between 1934 and 1982. With Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham, she became one of the four British Queens of Crime who towered over the crime fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. (Ngaio Marsh was always happy to be called British, belonging to that generation of New Zealanders who saw themselves as British subjects born in a far-flung corner of the Empire but still part of a world-wide community.)
Ngaio's books are generally set in England or New Zealand. Several of them feature her other loves, the theatre and art. This was helped by Inspector Alleyn marrying an artist.
In 1966, H.M. the Queen appointed her a Dame of the Order of the British Empire, the female equivalent of knighthood, so she became Dame Ngaio Marsh. She never married or had any children.
For more information, see Margaret Lewis's authorized biography,
Ngaio Marsh, a Life (1991) and also Ngaio's own autobiography,
Black Beech and Honeydew (1966).
Books by Ngaio Marsh:
A Man Lay Dead (1934)
Enter a Murderer (1935)
The Nursing Home Murder (1935)
Death in Ecstasy (1936)
Vintage Murder (1937)
Artists in Crime (1938)
Death in a White Tie (1938)
Overture to Death (1939)
Death at the Bar (1940)
Surfeit of Lampreys (1941) [
Death of a Peer in the US]
Death and the Dancing Footman (1942)
Colour Scheme (1943)
Died in the Wool (1945)
Final Curtain (1947)
Swing Brother Swing (1949) [
A Wreath for Rivera in the US]
Opening Night (1951) [
Night at the Vulcan in the US]
Spinsters in Jeopardy (1954)
Scales of Justice (1955)
Off With His Head (1957) [
Death of a Fool in the US]
Singing in the Shrouds (1959)
False Scent (1960)
Hand in Glove (1962)
Dead Water (1964)
Death at the Dolphin (1967) [
Killer Dolphin in the US]
Clutch of Constables (1968)
New Zealand (1968) [non-fiction]
When in Rome (1970)
Tied up in Tinsel (1972)
Black as He's Painted (1974)
Singing Land (1974) [non-fiction]
Last Ditch (1977)
Grave Mistake (1978)
Photo Finish (1980)
Light Thickens (1982)
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Ngaio was educated at St Margaret's College, Christchurch, New Zealand, and the Canterbury College School of Art, before becoming an actress around 1916. She kept up her devotion to the theatre and the world of art all her life. From 1928, she divided her time between her native New Zealand and the UK. London was more metropolitan, but her heart was in New Zealand.
Ngaio Marsh is best known now for thirty-two detective novels featuring Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, which appeared between 1934 and 1982. With Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham, she became one of the four British Queens of Crime who towered over the crime fiction of the 1930s and 1940s. (Ngaio Marsh was always happy to be called British, belonging to that generation of New Zealanders who saw themselves as British subjects born in a far-flung corner of the Empire but still part of a world-wide community.)
Ngaio's books are generally set in England or New Zealand. Several of them)
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