Featured Author:
Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters)
Edith Pargeter (1913-95) was an English author who wrote wrote nearly a hundred novels and short stories under various pseudonyms, and it was as Ellis Peters she became most well-known.
Knowing from a young age that she wished to be a writer, Edith took jobs which enabled her to spend all her time writing. A dozen books were produced under several pen names in the 1930s. In the Second World War she enlisted as a Wren (Women’s Royal Naval Service), receiving a medal for her efforts.
She wrote several books after the war about her experiences and about soldiers, based on the people she met during the war. She also began translating numerous Czechoslovakian books to English, based on her love affair with that country, and later was awarded a medal from the Czech people for her services.
Breaking Through
In the 1960s she wrote a series of mysteries about her character George Felse, set just after the war in her home region of Shropshire. These books were written under the pen name Ellis Peters, with Ellis being her brother’s name and Peters named after a friend’s child. The Felse series earned her first major recognition, winning an Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America in 1963.
Beginning in 1977 Pargeter/Peters began the twenty book Cadfael series about a Welsh Benedictine monk in the twelfth century. These well-researched novels became very popular, especially after radio and television adaptations were produced, and to this day are ranked at or near the top of historical mysteries.
Edith Pargeter was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 1994, shortly before her death in 1995. The British Crime Writers’ Association awarded her the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 1993, and they created the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award for best historical crime novel, which has been awarded every year since 1999.
This is an imagined interview between CozyMystery.com (CM) and Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters (EP). It has been synthesized from various interviews with Edith Pargeter over the years. All quotes from Edith Pargeter are her own words. Items in square brackets are where we have altered her words for clarity or to avoid spoilers. Please see the end of the article for source credits.
Early Days
CM: What was your childhood like?
EP: The house was full of books and music. Not very much else, but I don’t ever remember feeling deprived.
CM: Did you travel much?
EP: We never went on holiday, except occasionally to aunts or cousins for a treat. Few ordinary families did in the twenties; few could afford to.
CM: You told stories around the house?
EP: My sister and I both told stories, taking it in turn if we were doing something not very interesting, like dusting, or otherwise helping in the house.
CM: So it was an early goal of yours?
EP: I wanted to write. I wanted to sing. I wanted to act. I wanted to dance. But writing was always first.
CM: And that became your nickname in school.
EP: The girl who never stopped writing.
Shropshire
CM: Shropshire is on the border of England and Wales, and you lived there all your life.
EP: I was born and bred in Shropshire, and have never yet found any sound reason for leaving it.
CM: Is it fair to say you have used it as part of all your books?
EP: Shropshire has left its images in my books as indelibly as in my memory and imagination.
CM: So everything you write has to do with where you are?
EP: My writing is extremely visual. It is definitely based on where I am, since I’m describing pictures I can see in my own mind from around me.
Novels
CM: You wrote a large number of books. Is that the style you prefer to write?
EP: I’m not terribly good at short stories. I’ve written quite a few but I find them more difficult. I need the elbow room of the novel. I need space for descriptions and fiddling with things like the weather, and for people to contemplate. That’s hard to do in short stories.
CM: Many of your books are thrillers and mysteries. What brought you into those genres?
EP: [T]he thriller is a paradox. It must be a mystery. And it must be a novel. And it is virtually schizophrenic to aim at both. But for the dedicated author nothing less is conceivable. To lower your sights is unthinkable.
Cadfael
CM: Your most popular series is of course Cadfael. What do you think of him as?
EP: [T]he high medieval equivalent of a detective, an observer and agent of justice in the centre of the action.
CM: Did you always want Cadfael to become an ongoing series?
EP: Not at all. In fact, the first one was written in a slightly different style, a little lighter, and was conceived as a one off. I hadn’t intended for it to go ahead. Indeed I wrote one modern tale between the first and second Brother Cadfael novels, but that’s the last time I’ve been back from the 12th Century.
CM: How do you weave your stories into history?
EP: You must respect documented fact – only when the authorities fight over details do I use my own judgment and make a mix with fiction.
CM: How hard is it to keep the series going?
EP: The steady progression of the books has surprised me… It has caused me to lay emphasis on seasons, weather and the religious sequence of the year. But as soon as I realized this, I recognized how appropriate it is, since we are concerned with the regular lives of a community, people who make their exits and entrances in my books, but live just as surely in the intervals, and are dependent on times and seasons.
Historical Accuracy
CM: Your own knowledge of the twelfth century must be quite detailed. How would you have liked to live back then?
EP: People tend to look from a twentieth century viewpoint at the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and think how dreadful it must have been living in such conditions, without recalling that people who did live in those conditions really didn’t think much about them. I’ve tried to write the books from the viewpoint of someone who was there and found all these things quite normal.
CM: You’ve been praised for how much you write of the religious aspects of Cadfael’s life. How has it impacted your beliefs?
EP: He has underlined my belief. I have to say I am a religious person. I don’t go to church because I do not feel the need. I would like to attend more often but often I find church services a relevant and disappointing.
CM: Cadfael isn’t part of the legal system as such existed back then. How do you balance the desire for justice in each story?
EP: Cadfael doesn’t take the law’s exact point of view. He makes up his own mind on what is for the best, as he did in one case where he let a murderer go away, but having laid on him the penance of remembering life long and acting differently. So he got his own way. It’s not secular justice, and it’s a theme I’ve taken up in other books, the conflict between the human sense of justice and what’s dictated by the law. It’s a big question.
Writing Process
CM: You emphasize how you are a storyteller more than anything else.
EP: In my view, no one who can’t make that statement can possibly be a novelist.
CM: You are the kind of person who could write anywhere, regardless of distraction.
EP: I could concentrate in the common room, with table tennis at one end and someone playing the piano at the other.
CM: Do you do a lot of research before you write?
EP: Yes, I have quite a big library because if there is a book that I want to use, I like to have it in the house to go back to. Usually, since I was born here, I’ve accumulated knowledge about the region, being interested in history. A lot of it has been historical and archaeological interest.
CM: And you prefer to create an outline before you write?
EP: Sometimes three or more outlines.
CM: You were awarded an OBE for your writing. What did that mean to you?
EP: As it is supposed to be for services to literature, for a writer who has not been the critics’ absolute pet it means a lot. It is a serious acknowledgement. Actually, I do get pretty good reviews, but the critics tend to classify mystery writing as something apart from literature.
And finally…
CM: What do you hope people take from your books?
EP: They offer a degree of hope and consolation, and leave people feeling better, not worse about their fellow creatures and their situation in this imperfect world.
CM: Have you enjoyed the life you set out to achieve?
EP: I have been writing since I was at school. I always knew what I wanted most of all. I am lucky enough to have been doing exactly what I most wanted to do.
Do you have anything to say about this article? Agree or disagree with what we have to say? Let us know in the comments below.
Credits
Patricia Ward Biederman, “A Woman of Mystery : Fans Sleuth Out the English Creator of Tales of a Medieval Monk,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1993, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-18-we-12381-story.html
Margaret Lewis, Edith Pargeter: Ellis Peters (Bridgend, 1994).
Toby Neal, “Great Lives – Edith Pargeter,” Shropshire Star, December 27, 2021, https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/features/2021/12/27/great-lives–ellis-peters/
Ellen Nehr, “Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters),” Mystery File 31, 1991. https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=17958
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