Gladys Mitchell

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell (21 April 1901 – 27 July 1983) was an English writer best known for her creation of Mrs Bradley, the heroine of 66 detective novels. She also wrote under the pseudonyms Stephen Hockaby and Malcolm Torrie. Fêted during her life (called "the Great Gladys" by Philip Larkin), her work has been largely neglected in the decades since her death.

Life

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell was born in Cowley, Oxford on 19 April 1901 to James, a market gardener of Scottish parentage, and Annie. She was educated at Rothschild School, Brentford and The Green School. From 1919 to 1921 she attended Goldsmiths College and University College London.

Upon her graduation, Mitchell became a teacher of history, English and games at St Paul's School, Brentford until 1925. She then taught at St Ann's Senior Girls School, Hanwell until 1939. In 1926 she obtained an external diploma in European History from University College, and she then began to write novels while continuing to teach. In 1941 she joined Brentford School for Girls where she stayed until 1950. After a three-year break from teaching, she took a job at Matthew Arnold School, Staines, where she taught English and history, coached hurdling and wrote the annual school play until her retirement to Corfe Mullen, Dorset in 1961. She continued to write until her death aged 82 on 27 July 1983. Her estate was valued at £48 082.

She was a member of the Middlesex Education Association, the British Olympic Association, the Crime Writers' Association, PEN and the Society of Authors. Her hobbies included architecture and writing poetry. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and her interest in witchcraft was encouraged by her friend the detective novelist Helen Simpson. Mitchell never married.

Work

Mitchell wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career. Her first novel ('' Speedy Death'', 1929) introduced Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, a polymathic psychoanalyst and author who was featured in a further 65 novels. Her strong views and those of her assistant, Laura Menzies, on social and philosophical issues reflected those of her author; they appear to have been something of a self-portrait of the young Mitchell, reflecting, for good or ill, the standards of the modern, post-war era of the 1920s.

Mitchell was an early member of the Detection Club along with G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers and throughout the 1930s was considered to be one of the "Big Three women detective writers", but she often challenged and mocked the conventions of the genre – notably in her earliest books, such as the first novel ''Speedy Death'', where there is a particularly surprising twist to the plot, or her parodies of Christie in ''The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop'' (1929) and '' The Saltmarsh Murders'' (1932). Her plots and settings were unconventional with Freudian psychology, witchcraft (notably in ''The Devil at Saxon Wall'' 935and ''The Worsted Viper'' 943 and the supernatural (naiads and Nessie, ghosts and Greek gods) as recurrent themes.

In addition to her 66 Mrs. Bradley novels Mitchell also used the pseudonyms of Stephen Hockaby (for a series of historical novels) and Malcolm Torrie (for a series of detective stories featuring an architect named Timothy Herring) and wrote ten children's books under her own name.

After her death Mitchell's work was neglected although three posthumously published novels sold well in the 1980s. Radio adaptations were made (by Elizabeth Proud) of ''Speedy Death'' (6 October 1990) and ''The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop'' (11 & 18 December 1991) both with Mary Wimbush as Mrs Bradley and broadcast on BBC
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