Booth Library News

Library News

Tribute to P.D. James – 1920-2014 – The Baroness of Mystery

Posted on January 14th, 2015

P.D. James honing her craft as crime writer extraordinaire.

Young student P.D. James, second from left.

British author P.D. James (aka Phyllis Dorothy James White and Baroness James of Holland Park) passed away this past Thanksgiving at her home in London. She was born in Oxford the eldest of three children to Sidney, a tax inspector, and Dorothy James. At 16 she was forced to leave school in order to supplement the family income, as her father did not believe in higher education for women. In 1941 James met and married her husband, army doctor Ernest White. When her husband returned from the war suffering from mental illness until his death in 1964, Ms James, again, became the sole provider in her family. Before life as an author, she worked as a stage manager, a Red Cross Nurse, and as an administrator for a hospital, police and criminal policy departments. Ms James served on the Governor’s Board of the BBC and sat in the House of Lords as a conservative. James did not start writing until later on in life, in her mid-forties, after the death of her husband. In 1983 she was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, a national order of merit, and was bestowed Baroness James in 1991.

For over 50 years, P.D. James has been one of the most popular British “Crime Storytellers”–as opposed to the traditional “Mystery”–with the genre’s exploration of motivations, relationships and the meanings of justice. Among her 22 titles she also wrote an unusual memoir as well as a best-selling instructional on how to write detective fiction.

Below is a list of her titles, many of which are available for free download via MyMediaMall in our E.I.U. online catalog.

watching the detectives