Literary Birthday – 21 April – Gladys Mitchell

Gladys Mitchell was born on 21 April 1901 and died on 27 July 1983.

Gladys Mitchell Quotes

1. I find every book difficult to write, partly because, even if I make a plan, I seldom keep to it. Then I am apt to get new ideas as I go along, and this often necessitates a certain amount of rewriting. (GladysMitchell.com)
2. I have, fortunately, immense powers of concentration and a single-track mind, so on the whole I suppose each book takes about seven months to write, but I do a great deal of revision and a certain amount of research as I go along. (GladysMitchell.com)
3. I write in longhand and send the manuscript away to be typed. Then I make alterations to the typescript, so that means more typing. I can’t stand the sound of a typewriter, and can’t spell on a machine, either. (GladysMitchell.com)
4. I am never in control of my characters. They do and say things I never intended. (GladysMitchell.com)
5. The writing of crime novels is in no way therapeutic to me. I am fascinated by murder because it is about the last thing I would think of committing, apart from blackmail. (GladysMitchell.com)
6. There are those among us who claim that the detective story is a form of escapist literature. Lovers of the genre will deny this, and they are right to do so, for the detective story addict is not content to sit back and enjoy what is called ‘a cosy read‘. For full enjoyment of the story, the reader needs to use his brains. A problem has been set before him, and the true addict obtains pleasure from doing his best to solve it. (GladysMitchell.com)
7. The painstaking detective measuring footprints, treasuring cigarette ends, taking fingerprints, is a genuine character in real life and often ‘gets his man’, but in fiction his worthy, molelike activities are apt to give a somewhat dull read. (GladysMitchell.com)
8. So why do people read detective stories? I think one of the main reasons is that such books must, above all things, have a definite plot. Modern literature is full of plays and films that end nowhere; novels and short stories that leave the playgoer or the reader suspended in mid-air, forced either to impotent irritation or else to having to invent their own outcome. Detective stories, by their very nature, cannot cheat in this way. Their writers must tidy up the loose ends; must supply a logical solution to the problem they have posed; must also, to hold the reader’s attention, combine the primitive lust and energy of the hunter with the cold logic of the scholarly mind. (GladysMitchell.com)

Gladys Mitchell was an English writer best known for her creation of Mrs Bradley, the heroine of 66 detective novels. She wrote in the cozy mystery genre. Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the psychoanalyst detective of her novels, who lived in Stone House, situated in the village of Wandles Parva, Hampshire. Mitchell wrote at least one novel a year and was an early member of the Detection Club, alongside Agatha Christie, G.K Chesterton, and Dorothy Sayers. She was a member of the  the Crime Writers’ Association, PEN, and the Society of Authors. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and her interest in witchcraft was encouraged by her friend the detective novelist, Helen Simpson. She was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger in 1976.

Source for image: GladysMitchell.com

by Amanda Patterson

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