Popular and prolific Golden Age mystery writer
Patricia Wentworth (1877-1961; her birth year usually is given as 1878 but appears to be have been 1877) was born in India, daughter to a prominent military family, but she spent many of her childhood years in England, where for part of the 1880s and 1890s she resided at Lennox House, her grandmother's large home in Blackheath, and attended the recently-founded Blackheath High School for Girls.
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| Lennox House (front) |
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Many years later Wentworth and her second husband, George Turnbull (1877-1970), resided at Camberley, Surrey, from 1936 until Wentworth's death in 1961 making their home at stylish Heatherglade House.
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| drawing room |
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| master bedroom |
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| dining room |
In addition to the room shown above, there was a study, kitchen, breakfast room and garage on the first floor and six additional bedrooms above. Plus, unlike some of those houses you see on floor plans in Golden Age mysteries, there were bathrooms! If there had been a ballroom and billiard room you could have staged Cluedo (aka Clue) here.
Here Patricia Wentworth wrote some forty of her sixty-five mystery novels, including all her Miss Silver Detective novels (outside of the first,
Grey Mask), including two of my favorites,
Miss Silver Comes to Stay (1949) and
The Watersplash (1951).
Tudorbethan interiors almost perfectly preserved - lovely.
ReplyDeleteYes, so charming, I think.
DeleteWow, lovely. Is this home open to the public now? Oh to step back in time, wouldn't it be grand if we could?
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not open, that would be lovely if it were. Wentworth has been so comparatively under the radar compared to Christie, seems a shame. But more to come!
DeleteSUCH Wentworth-looking settings! So glad to see these and imagine those mysteries there.
ReplyDeleteMoira, I would buy Heatherglade House in a heartbeat!
DeleteOH, what a wonderful day this is – I have found your blog and the best bio info on Patricia Wentworth that I have found anywhere! I discovered her only this last summer and I'm about 2/3 of the way through her entire opus. I'm gobsmacked that she's not at LEAST as popular as Agatha Christie! Such an intelligent, perceptive, imaginative and FUN writer! I'd love to know more about your primary sources because I'd LOVE to read more about her. Or perhaps you'll write a detailed biography?? Thank you so much for your research and insights! :-D
ReplyDeleteThank you so much feralkittie. I am indeed doing a bio, there will be lots and lots of new info about PW, along with new pics. It's the steady enthusiasm for her over the years that motivated me to do this.
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ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your reply – you have no idea how excited I am about this! :-D Any projection when it might be available? (Need any advance readers?) So happy my googling finally led me to you & this great news.
ReplyDeleteI have written a "concise" version already with the new info I have found. The publisher has all the new pics. I have to finish actually rereading and first time reading all of her books, which as you will know takes a while. Then I am expanding it into a full size bio with discussion of all her books and her life in context of the times.
DeleteThere will be a lot of comparison with Agatha Christie, because the more I found out about her the more I noticed how similar their lives were in a lot of ways. Especially with two marriages and the second marriage being the long, satisfying one. It's a love story of a woman who triumphed over multiple adversities and made a fantastically successful companionate marriage in middle life that sustained a remarkable writing career. Expect to have available next year.
Contact me through my email address on my about me page and I can send your info on to the publisher concerning advance readers. I also have a vintage mystery group on Facebook if you have that and am starting a PW one, if you do FB.
I'm very happy to hear of your enthusiasm. The truth is PW really has had an impressive multi-generational mystery fan base over over a century now and she was arguably the most important person in the development of the so-called "cozy" mystery. She is much under-credited by critics but her fans know better! I want to tell my story too of how I became a male Wentworth fan, one of the mentworths. Please get in touch. :)