Edith Ngaio Marsh was born on 23 April 1895 in Merivale, Christchurch, to Rose Elizabeth Seager and her husband, Henry Edmund Marsh, a clerk in the Bank of New Zealand in Christchurch.
Between 1913 and 1919 Marsh attended Canterbury College School of Art as a part-time student, supplementing her income with private tutoring. Here she met Evelyn Polson (later Page), who became a lifelong friend, and Olivia Spencer Bower. She shared a studio in Cashel Street with a group of fellow students who were interested in innovative artistic styles and approaches.
arsh works within the classic detective story form, enlivening it with the high quality of her writing and a range of erudite references. While many of her novels have an English village or country house setting and subscribe to a conservative view of society, she is capable of innovation, especially in terms of realistic characterisation and psychology. Several works use theatre as a narrative context. Four have New Zealand settings – Vintage murder (1937), Colour scheme (1943), Died in the wool (1944) and Photo-finish (1980) – and there are many New Zealand references and characters. Her detective, Roderick Alleyn, who appears in all her fiction, displays the standard aristocratic confidence and a rational scepticism about human nature, but is notable, in the age of Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot, for his lack of eccentricity. Her father's education at Dulwich College, alma mater of the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, was an influence in the choice of name. Alleyn's friend (later wife) Agatha Troy first appears in Artists in crime (1938). Troy is a painter, and there is perhaps a certain amount of autobiography in the construction of her character.
She wrote A Man Lay Dead (1934)
Enter a Murderer (1935)
The Nursing Home Murder (1935)
Death in Ecstasy (1936)
Vintage Murder (1937)
Artists in Crime (1938)
Death in a White Tie (1938)
Overture to Death (1939)
Death at the Bar (1940)
Surfeit of Lampreys (1941); Death of a Peer in the U.S.
Death and the Dancing Footman
Education
Canterbury College School of Art as a part-time student