Ngaio Marsh

Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh ( NY-oh; 23 April 1895 – 18 February 1982) was a New Zealand writer.

As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Marsh is known as one of the "Queens of Crime", along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. She is known primarily for her character Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective who works for the London Metropolitan Police, and who first appeared in her novel A Man Lay Dead (1934).

The Ngaio Marsh Awards are awarded annually for the best New Zealand mystery, crime and thriller fiction writing.

Youth

Marsh was born on 23 April 1895 in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where she also died. In the Introduction to The Collected Short Fiction of Ngaio Marsh, Douglas G. Greene writes: "Marsh explained to an interviewer... that in New Zealand European children often receive native names, and Ngaio... can mean either 'light on the water' or 'little tree bug' in the Māori language. Other sources say that it is the name of a native flowering tree." Her father neglected to register her birth until 1900 and there is some uncertainty about the date. She was the only child of Rose and bank clerk Henry Marsh, described by Marsh as "have-nots". Her mother's sister Ruth married the geologist, lecturer, and curator Robert Speight.

Ngaio Marsh was educated at St Margaret's College in Christchurch, where she was one of the first pupils when the school was founded. She studied painting at the Canterbury College (NZ) School of Art before joining the Allan Wilkie company as an actress in 1916 and touring New Zealand. For a short time in 1921 she was a member of the Rosemary Rees English Comedy Company, a touring company formed by actor-manager Rosemary Rees.

In 1928 Marsh went to London with friends (on whom she would base the Lamprey family in Surfeit of Lampreys). From then on she divided her time between living in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In London she began writing syndicated articles, which were published in New Zealand. In addition she and one of the friends with whom she had come to London opened Touch and Go, a handicraft shop that sold items such as decorated trays, bowls and lampshades. From 1928 to 1932 she ran the shop in Knightsbridge, London. During that time she wrote her first book, A Man Lay Dead. She wrote about the process of writing her first book in an essay, "Roderick Alleyn".

Marsh was a member of The Group, an art association based in Christchurch, New Zealand. She exhibited with them in 1927, 1928, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1940 and 1947.

Career

Internationally she is best known for her 32 detective novels published between 1934 and 1982. Along with Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie, she has been classed as one of the four original "Queens of Crime" —female writers who dominated the genre of crime fiction in the Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s. Agatha Christie held that both Muriel Spark and Ngaio Marsh wrote a very good detective story.

All her novels feature British CID detective Roderick Alleyn. Several novels feature Marsh's other loves, the theatre and painting. A number are set around theatrical productions (Enter a Murderer, Vintage Murder, Overture to Death, Opening Night, Death at the Dolphin, and Light Thickens), and three others are about actors off stage (Colour Scheme, False Scent and Final Curtain). Her short story "'I Can Find My Way Out" is also set around a theatrical production and is the earlier "Jupiter case" referred to in Opening Night; the short story won third prize in 1946 in the inaugural short story contest of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Alleyn marries a painter, Agatha Troy, whom he meets during an investigation (Artists in Crime), and who features in three later novels.

Most of the novels are set in England, but four are set in New Zealand, with Alleyn either on secondment to the New Zealand police (Colour Scheme and Died in the Wool) or on holiday (Vintage Murder and Photo Finish); Surfeit of Lampreys begins in New Zealand but continues in London.

Notably, Colour Scheme includes Māori people among its cast of characters, unusual for novels of the British mystery genre. This novel is said to further subvert the genre by incorporating elements of spy fiction and providing a veiled critique of the British Empire.

In 2018, HarperCollins Publishers released Money in the Morgue by Ngaio Marsh and Stella Duffy. The book was started by Marsh during World War II but abandoned. Working with just the book's title, first three chapters and some notes –but no idea of the plot or motive of the villain– Duffy completed the novel.

Theatre

Marsh's great passion was the theatre. In 1942 she produced a modern-dress Hamlet for the Canterbury University College Drama Society (now University of Canterbury Dramatic Society Incorporated or Dramasoc), the first of many Shakespearean productions with the society until 1969. In 1944, Hamlet and a production of Othello toured a theatre-starved New Zealand to rapturous acclaim. In 1949, assisted by entrepreneur Dan O'Connor, her student players toured Australia with a new version of Othello and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. In the 1950s she was involved with the New Zealand Players, a relatively short-lived national professional touring repertory company. In 1972 she was invited by the Christchurch City Council to direct Shakespeare's Henry V, the inaugural production for the opening of the newly constructed James Hay Theatre in Christchurch; she made the unusual choice of casting two male leads, who alternated on different nights.

She lived to see New Zealand develop a viable professional theatre industry having realistic Arts Council support, with many of her protégés to the forefront. The 430-seat Ngaio Marsh Theatre at the University of Canterbury is named in her honour.

Ngaio Marsh Theatre, University of Canterbury

In Haere-roa, the UCSA (University of Canterbury Student Association) building, is the iconic Ngaio Marsh Theatre. As well as being a theatre, it is also where events and lecture are held. UCSA's 160 clubs and societies use the space as well.

Museum

Her home, now known as Ngaio Marsh House, in Cashmere, a suburb of Christchurch on the northern slopes of the Port Hills, is preserved as a museum.

Awards and honours

1948 – Appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services in connexion with drama and literature in New Zealand, in the 1948 King's Birthday Honours

1962 – Conferred an honorary doctorate by the University of Canterbury

1966 – Appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services in the arts, especially writing and theatre production, in the 1966 Queen's Birthday Honours

1974 – Inducted into the Detection Club

1978 – Received the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement as a detective novelist from the Mystery Writers of America

1989 – Honoured with a stamp by New Zealand Post as part of a New Zealand authors series

2015 – Honoured on 23 April 2015 with a Google Doodle

Personal life

Marsh was unofficially engaged to Edward Bristed, who died in action in December 1917. She never married and had no children. She enjoyed close companionships with women, including her lifelong friend Sylvia Fox, but denied being lesbian, according to biographer Joanne Drayton.

"I think Ngaio Marsh wanted the freedom of being who she was in a world, especially in a New Zealand that was still very conformist in its judgments of what constituted 'decent jokers, good Sheilas, and 'weirdos'", Roy Vaughan wrote after meeting her on a P&O Liner. A detective novel,"Blue Blood" (1997), by Stevan Eldred-Grigg in a pastiche of her style, portrays her in a lesbian relationship.

In 1965, she published an autobiography, Black Beech and Honeydew. British author and publisher Margaret Lewis wrote an authorized biography, Ngaio Marsh, A Life in 1991. New Zealand art historian Joanne Drayton's biography, Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime was published in 2008. Towards the end of her life she systematically destroyed many of her papers, letters, documents and handwritten manuscripts.

Marsh died in Christchurch and was buried at the Church of the Holy Innocents at Mount Peel.