Illness Following her mother's death after what Marsh described as “an illness as cruelly and as excruciatingly protracted as if it had been designed by Torquemada,” she remained in New Zealand to care for her father. This first book, A Man Lay Dead, was not published until 1934, by which time she had returned to New Zealand because her mother was ill. In 1931, on another rainy occasion, she began writing her first mystery novel. Locke, and recalls her rainy-day find of Strand magazines and discovering Sherlock Holmes. In her 1965 autobiography, Black Beech and Honeydew, Marsh mentions reading such authors as Baroness Orczy, Guy Boothby, and William J. She frequented the London theater at every opportunity.Įarly Mystery Inclinations Mysteries had always been read in the Marsh household in New Zealand.

Marsh lived in England from 1928 to 1933, doing interior decorating and operating a gift shop. She turned them into fictional characters in several of her books, calling them the “Lampreys.” She created, as her series detective, Roderick Alleyn, named after Edward Alleyn, the great Elizabethan tragedian and founder of Dulwich College, the school her father had attended before immigrating to New Zealand. Here, she became friendly with a British family of the peerage and accepted an invitation to visit them when they returned to England. When that company failed, she returned home and was active as actress, producer, and director in a group staging charity shows. Upon her return to Christchurch, Marsh resumed painting for a brief period before leaving once again to tour with a local acting company formed by Rosemary Rees. She toured with Wilkie for two years, meanwhile writing verse, articles, and short

Though he rejected the play, he returned it in person and invited her to join his company. Her parents had been amateur actors, and she considered the appearances of Allan Wilkie's Shakespearean troupe in Christchurch “one of the great events of student days.”Īcting Career, International Travel, and a Move to London Marsh had already begun to write and submitted a Regency play, The Medallion, to Wilkie.

She first studied painting, entering art school when she was fifteen, but her great love was always the theater. Works in Biographical and Historical Contextĭeveloping Early Passions for Theater Ngaio Marsh was born in Christchurch on April 23, 1899, to Henry Edmund and Rose Elizabeth Seager Marsh. In a career that spanned almost half a century, her popularity grew steadily, and her works became as sought after in the United States as they were in England and her native New Zealand. During what is usually referred to as the Golden Age of the detective story, Ngaio Marsh was one of a small group of British mystery writers who set standards of the detective novel that broadened the audience for the genre.

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