Mollie Hardwick

Background

Mollie Hardwick was born on March 17, 1916, in the United Kingdom.

Career

Beginning her career as a radio announcer for the British Broadcasting Corporation in the 1940s, Mollie Hardwick became a script editor and director for the BBC from 1946 to 1963. She left the BBC to freelance in the 1960s, initially publishing biographies such as Emma, Lady Hamilton: A Study (1969) and Mrs. Dizzy: The Life of Mary Anne Disraeli, Viscountess Beaconsfield (1972).

Hardwick's prolific career as a novelist began in the 1970s, when she started writing stories set in eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century England, including Charlie Is My Darling (1977), Willowwood (1980), The Merrymaid (1984), and Blood Royal (1988). At the same time, Hardwick found great success in her novelizations of the British television series Upstairs, Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street.

Interested in mystery fiction as well, she wrote a number of nonfiction books and plays with her husband, Michael Hardwick, featuring Sherlock Holmes. These include The Sherlock Holmes Companion (1962), Four Sherlock Holmes Plays (1964), and Four More Sherlock Holmes Plays (1973).

Hardwick also created her own mystery series character, Doran Fairweather, an antique dealer, and amateur sleuth who appeared in such novels as Malice Domestic (1986) and The Dreaming Damozel (1990).

In addition to these interests, Hardwick often wrote about Charles Dickens, creating - again with her husband - nonfiction books about Dickens as well as play adaptations of his works. Among these are The Charles Dickens Companion (1965), Plays from Dickens (1970), and The Charles Dickens Encyclopedia (1973).

Achievements

• Mollie Hardwick was best known for her novelizations of the Upstairs, Downstairs television series, her books and play adaptations featuring Sherlock Holmes. In addition, he distinguished herself as the creator of the popular Doran Fairweather series of novels, featuring an antique dealer turned amateur sleuth, beginning with Malice Domestic (1986).

Works

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• book

  • The Duchess of Duke Street

    (Louisa Trotter, a beautiful and remarkable Cockney girl o...)

    1976
  • Willowwood

    (While visiting her aunt's London house, beautiful but cri...)

    1980
  • The Shakespeare Girl: A Novel

    (In turn-of-the-century England, the life of a lively, qui...)

    1983
  • Monday's Child

    (Laura Diamond, acclaimed by many as the most beautiful wo...)

    1981
  • Parson's Pleasure

    (When Doran Fairweather's feckless partner shows up out of...)

    1992
  • Malice Domestic

    (Doran Fairweather loves her new life in a tiny Kent count...)

    1992
  • Uneaseful Death 1988
  • The Years of Change 1974
  • The Dreaming Damozel 1990
  • The World of Upstairs, Downstairs 1976
  • Come Away, Death: A Novel 1997
  • The Bandersnatch 1989
  • Perish in July 1989
  • Sarah's Story 1973
  • Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes 1964
  • Mrs. Bridges' Story 1975
  • By the Sword Divided 1983
  • I Remember Love 1982
  • Game's Afoot: Four Sherlock Holmes Plays 1969
  • Alfred Deller: A Singularity of Voice 1968
  • The Charles Dickens Encyclopedia 1973
  • Thomas and Sarah 1978

Interests

• Writers

  Charles Dickens

Connections

Mollie married Michael Hardwick, also an author, in 1961.

husband:

Michael Hardwick