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Ngaio Marsh Edit Profile

also known as Edith Ngaio Marsh, Dame Ngaio Marsh

director writer

Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre director.

Background

Marsh was born in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

Career

From 1928 she divided her time between living in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom.

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 two others are about actors off stage (Final Curtain and False Scent). 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. Alleyn marries a painter, Agatha Troy, whom he meets during an investigation (Artists in Crime), and who features in several later novels.

Achievements

  • She lived long enough to see New Zealand set up with a viable professional theatre industry with 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. Her home on the Cashmere Hills is preserved as a museum.

    Marsh never married or had children. 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.

Works

  • book

    • A Man Lay Dead, Died in the Wool, Hand in Glove

    • Death on the Air and Other Stories

  • non-fiction

    • Black Beech and Honeydew, New Zealand

  • story

    • The Hand in the Sand, The Cupid Mirror

Interests

  • theatre

Connections

Marsh never married or had children.