Gladys Mitchell (Author of A Speedy Death).
THE LAST OF THE GOLDEN AGE WRITERS - William A. S. Sarjeant's overview of Gladys Mitchell's life and works BATHTUBS AND GLADYS MITCHELL - Andrew Osmond's essay on a popular Mitchell motif: the deadliness of a drawn bath.Speedy Death (1929), the first novel featuring perennial sleuth Mrs. (soon to be Dame) Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, set the tone for Mitchell’s half-century-long career as a mystery writer. In.Were she subject to the aging process like the rest of us, she would be over a hundred now, conceivably older, even, than Poirot: if 55 in 1929, as Miss Mitchell suggests, she would be 102 now (and 110 when the last Bradley stories were published, posthumously, in 1984).
Born in Cowley, Oxford, in 1901, Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell was the daughter of market gardener James Mitchell, and his wife, Annie. She was educated at Rothschild School, Brentford and Green School, Isleworth, before attending Goldsmiths College and University College, London from 1919-1921.Evans’ writers find the queer linings to some of the classic British “Crime Queens” —Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Gladys Mitchell, Josephine Tey, several of whom are now thought to have led lesbian lives themselves. The greatest of all mystery writers, Agatha Christie, is written about often in Murder in the Closet.
Gladys Mitchell is one of the most popular Golden Age mystery writers, and her books have far outlived her. Her works amount to more than 60 books, which is no mean achievement by any standards. Perhaps her greatest accomplishment as an author is the creation of Mrs. Bradley, a witty and derisive character who appears in nearly 66 books.
