Anna Emilia Clarke

Background

Anna Clarke was born on April 28, 1919, in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the daughter of Fred Clarke and Edith Annie (Gillams) Clarke.

Education

Anna Clarke graduated from London External with a Bachelor of Science in 1945. After that, she went to the Open University and earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1973. She later graduated from the University of Sussex, earning a Master of Arts in 1975.

Career

Anna Clarke originally intended to be a mathematician, but a job as a secretary for the publisher Victor Gollancz in the late 1940s sparked her interest in the industry. She worked briefly as a secretary for the London publishing firms Victor Gollancz Ltd, from 1947 to 1950, and Eyre & Spottiswoode from 1951 to 1952. She also worked for the British Association for American Studies from 1956 to 1962.

Suffering from a severe illness and claustrophobia, Clarke had to leave her job and seek therapy for a time. When she had recovered, she found herself in need of an income and so tried her hand at writing, which she started in 1968. At first, she attempted to publish straight fiction, but she found no publishers for her more serious novels; therefore, she turned to mystery novels. Specializing in what is commonly referred to as “cozies," Clarke wrote stories with a distinctly literary sensibility. Her series character Professor Paula Glenning is an intellectual who solves crimes with research, dialogue, and brains rather than muscles and violence. Among the over two dozen novels produced by Clarke are The Darkened Room (1968), Legacy of Evil (1976), Soon She Must Die (1984), and The Case of the Anxious Aunt (1996).

Anna Clarke was a keen champion of the "biblio-mystery" (a sub-genre within a sub-genre), favoring literary themes, plots and settings, and characters who could stop a conversation, or freeze a rival, with a well-honed quote. Latterly her main series character was an English literary professor, Paula Glenning, who invariably found herself embroiled in dirty work in the English department of some ivy-clad campus, or pursuing bundles of old manuscripts while rivals murderously tried to stop her.

In The Mystery Lady (1986), Glenning is contracted to write the biography of the popular bestseller Rosie O'Grady (shades of Wodehouse's Rosie M. Banks). But before long she discovers evidence that O'Grady may not in fact exist; that the name may cloak someone else entirely - someone who may have strong, indeed homicidal, reasons for not being unmasked.

Although her writing career started late in life - her first novel published within a year of her 50th birthday, Clarke more than made up for lost time. At one stage, such was her rate of composition that her British publisher frantically issued three novels in just 12 months. And yet, for all that, Clarke's own view of her detective-fiction talents and output was ambivalent, even mildly resentful. "I only took to writing mystery and suspense stories because nobody wanted to publish the straight novels... I was writing," she said.

Achievements

• Anna Clarke is a productive author, who created nearly thirty highly rated novels. Her works are in the main well crafted, skilfully plotted and highly entertaining, as her readers say.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Case of the Anxious Aunt

    (When her Aunt Isabel claims that her nurse is trying to b...)

    1996
  • Poison Parsley

    (Widow Rosalind Bannister becomes mixed up with a well-kno...)

    1979
  • My Search for Ruth

    (A young girl, mysteriously orphaned, sets out to learn th...)

    1975
  • One of us must die

    (With their marriage cruelly destroyed by the death of the...)

    1978
  • Legacy of Evil

    (Following the death of her nasty husband, Elsie Bullen di...)

    1976
  • Darkened Room

    (Found innocent of her husband's murder because of insuffi...)

    1968
  • The deathless and the dead

    (Scholar John Broome's inquiries about a Victorian poet br...)

    1976
  • The Mystery Lady

    (Paula Glenning, English professor and recently published ...)

    1986
  • Whitelands Affair

    (Paula Glenning visits a retired professor who is sure his...)

    1989
  • Last Seen in London

    (When Paula Glenning and a pretty young student who is loo...)

    1987
  • The Case of the Ludicrous Letters

    (A newcomer to the Heathview Villas, Paula Glenning begins...)

    1994
  • Soon She Must Die

    (Jane Bates, a young nurse, encourages romance between Rob...)

    1983
  • We the Bereaved

    (Widower Harry Johnson wonders if an unexpected legacy fro...)

    1982
  • The Poisoned Web

    (Patience Merriman, an old, manipulative woman, is not abo...)

    1979
  • Last Judgment

    (The motive for murder appears to be the papers of novelis...)

    1985
  • Murder in Writing

    (First Edition, published for the Crime Club. A writing cl...)

    1988
  • Mind To Murder 1971
  • The end of a shadow 1972
  • Plot counter-plot 1974
  • This Downhill Path 1977
  • The lady in black 1977
  • Letter from the dead 1977
  • Last Voyage 1980
  • Desire to kill 1982
  • Cabin 3033 Anna Clarke 1986
  • Case of the Paranoid Patient, The 1991

Membership

• 

  Anna Clarke was a member of the British Federation of University Women.

  British Federation of University Women , United Kingdom

• 

  Anna Clarke was a member of the Crime Writers Association.

  Crime Writers Association , United Kingdom

• 

  Anna Clarke was a member of the Society of Authors.

  Society of Authors , United Kingdom

Connections

Anna Clarke was married to David Hackel in 1947 and divorced in 1957.

husband:

David Hackel

References

• Contemporary Authors vol. 233