Celia Margaret Fremlin (20 June 1914 – 16 June 2009) was an English writer of mystery fiction.

Life

Celia was born in

Kingsbury Kingsbury may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Kingsbury, London, a district of northwest London in the borough of Brent ** Kingsbury tube station, London Underground station * Kingsbury, Warwickshire, a village and civil parish in Warwickshi ...

, now part of

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England. She was the daughter of Heaver Fremlin and Margaret Addiscott. Her older brother,

John H. Fremlin John Heaver Fremlin (4 March 1913 – 9 March 1995) was an English nuclear physicist. Life and work Fremlin was secretary of the Cambridge Scientists Anti-War Group. Responding to concerns about the use of poison gas bombs, he hosted experim ...

, later became a nuclear physicist. Fremlin studied Classics at Somerville College,

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. From 1942 to 2000 she lived in

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

, London. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, with whom she had three children; he died in 1968. In 1985, Fremlin married Leslie Minchin, who died in 1999. Her many crime novels and stories helped modernize the

sensation novel The sensation novel, also sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s.I. Ousby ed., ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (1995) p. 844 Its literary forebears i ...

tradition by introducing criminal and (rarely) supernatural elements into domestic settings. Her 1958 novel ''The Hours Before Dawn'' won the

Edgar Award The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor the bes ...

in 1960. Fremlin was involved in

Mass-Observation Mass-Observation is a United Kingdom social research project; originally the name of an organisation which ran from 1937 to the mid-1960s, and was revived in 1981 at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation originally aimed to record everyday ...

during the war, and published ''War Factory'' with

Tom Harrisson Major (United Kingdom), Major Tom Harnett Harrisson, DSO OBE (26 September 1911 – 16 January 1976) was a British polymath. In the course of his life he was an ornithologist, explorer, journalist, broadcaster, soldier, guerrilla, ethnologist, mu ...

in 1943. With Jeffrey Barnard, she was co-presenter of a BBC2 documentary, ''Night and Day'', describing diurnal and nocturnal London, broadcast on 23 January 1987. Fremlin was an advocate of assisted suicide and

euthanasia Euthanasia (from el, εὐθανασία 'good death': εὖ, ''eu'' 'well, good' + θάνατος, ''thanatos'' 'death') is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering. Different countries have different eut ...

. In a newspaper interview she admitted to assisting four people to die. In 1983 civil proceedings were brought against her as one of the five members of the EXIT Executive committee which had published ''A Guide to Self Deliverance'', but the court refused to declare the booklet unlawful."Striking Link between Suicides and Booklet", London Times, 19 April 1983 She was also involved with the

Progressive League The Progressive League was a British organisation for social reform and the promotion of scientific humanism, founded in 1932 by H. G. Wells and C. E. M. Joad under the name "Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals" (FPSI). One of the ...

Writing

Lucy Lethbridge Lucy Lethbridge (born Hammersmith, London) is a British author of non-fiction books for children and adults. Career Lethbridge is the author of a history of the largest single occupation in 20th century Great Britain: ''Servants: A Downstair ...

has written of Fremlin's work that "almost all her novels centring round the home as the harbour of a particularly horrible, intimate, terror". Some of her novels have been reissued since her death.

Death

She died on 16 June 2009 in

Bournemouth Bournemouth () is a coastal resort town in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council area of Dorset, England. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 183,491, making it the largest town in Dorset. It is situated on the Southern ...

Bibliography

Manners and Society

*1940 – ''The Seven Chars of Chelsea'' *1943 – ''War Factory'' (with Tom Harrisson)

Novels

*1958 – ''The Hours Before Dawn''; (

for Best Novel, 1960) *1959 – ''Uncle Paul'' *1961 – ''Seven Lean Years'' (US: Wait for the Wedding) *1963 – ''The Trouble Makers'' *1964 – ''The Jealous One'' *1967 – ''Prisoner's Base'' *1969 – ''Possession'' *1972 – ''Appointment with Yesterday'' *1975 – ''The Long Shadow'' *1977 – ''The Spider-Orchid'' *1980 – ''With No Crying'' *1982 – ''The Parasite Person'' *1990 – ''Listening in the Dusk'' *1991 – ''Dangerous Thoughts'' *1993 – ''The Echoing Stones'' *1994 – ''King of the World''

Collections

*1970 – ''Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark'' *1974 – ''By Horror Haunted'' *1984 – ''A Lovely Day to Die'' *2019 - ''Ghostly Stories''

Poetry

*1996 – ''Duet in Verse'' (with Leslie Minchin)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fremlin, Celia 1914 births 2009 deaths People from Kingsbury, London English crime fiction writers Edgar Award winners Members of the Detection Club English women novelists Women mystery writers 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English women writers Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford People from Hampstead