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Bodies from the Library

Bodies from the Library

Lost Tales of Mystery and Suspense by Agatha Christie and other Masters of the Golden Age
CrimeShort Stories
Pages
336
Published
2018
Language
English

Synopsis

Bodies from the Library gathers stories that had gone unread for decades: unpublished manuscripts, magazine tales never collected in book form, and rarities cut from other volumes, all dating from the golden age of British detective fiction between the two world wars. Editor and crime-fiction historian Tony Medawar assembled the collection from archives, estates, and out-of-print periodicals.

The contributors include some of the era's best-known names alongside less familiar ones — Georgette Heyer, A. A. Milne, Cecil Day-Lewis (writing as Nicholas Blake), and Christianna Brand among them — each represented by a story that had essentially vanished from print. The result is less a themed collection than a rescue mission, restoring plots, puzzles, and voices that had genuinely been lost to readers.

The first volume in an ongoing annual series, Bodies from the Library established a template that Medawar has continued in subsequent installments, each one excavating further forgotten corners of the golden age of detective fiction.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

MysteriousAtmosphericNostalgic

Genres

Crime Short Stories Mystery Classics

Authors

A
A. A. Milne

A. A. Milne was born in Kilburn, London and went to school at a small independent school run by his father, John Vine Milne. He went to Westminster School and studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was married in 1913, and then joined the British Army in World War I. In 1920, his son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born. In 1925, Milne moved to a country home called Cotchford Farm in Hartfield, East Sussex. Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne's most famous work, was published in 1926. Althoug...

C
Cecil Day-Lewis

>Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis was born in County Laois, Ireland, in 1904. After his mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his clergyman father, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. He was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927. Lewis initially worked as a teacher to supplement his income from his poetry writing. Under the pen-name Nicholas Blake, he published his first Nigel Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof,...

C
Christianna Brand

Christianna Brand was born Mary Christianna Milne in Malaya but spent most of her childhood in England and India. She had a number of different occupations, including model, dancer, shop assistant and governess. Brand also wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Ann Ashe, Annabel Jones, Mary Brand, Mary Roland, and China Thompson. Christianna Brand served as chair of the Crime Writers' Association from 1972 to 1973. (Wikipedia)

G
Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer was born on 16 August 1902 in Wimbledon, London, England, UK. She was the eldest child of Sylvia Watkins and George Heyer; her brother George Boris was born four years later, and her brother Frank nine years later. During her childhood, the family lived also in Paris, France, but they returned to England before World War I. During the war, her father served as a requisitions officer for the British Army in France. Her father encouraged her to read, he never forbade her any book....