Edith Nio Marsh is a New Zealand writer and theater activist. Dame Edith Nio Marsh, along with Agatha Christie, is recognized as one of the British detective queens.
Edith Marsh was born on April 23, 1895 in Christchurch. Her father worked at a local bank. He was a cheerful person, he did not pay attention to troubles. Mother loved to play in amateur performances. Since theater troupes from England very often came to Zealand, the girl was taken to performances.
Literary vocation
Nio was taught to play the piano and paint. Music-making did not work out, but painting for many years became the favorite pastime of the future famous writer. The girl was very fond of riding a pony presented to her. After graduating from Margaret College, Nio went to study at the University of Canterbury at the Faculty of Arts. The student seriously thought about the career of an artist.
She continued to play in productions. At twelve, the young writer created a small poetic play "Cinderella". She later wrote essays for the newspaper. In 1920, the theater under the direction of Alan Wilkie arrived in the city on tour. Since the girl fell in love with the work of Shakespeare since her school days, quotes and associations with his works are found in all of her writings.
The march was conquered by the performance of the artists. The girl herself created the play "Medallion". The narrative was interspersed with the motives of many great writers and there were many fights. The writer ventured to show her creation to Wilkie. He made sensible comments, suggesting that the talented debutante would continue to create. The girl was offered to join the troupe. Parents did not resist.
The first detective story was written by accident. Marsh was reading a book about the murder game. Suddenly, the idea came to write about a situation where the murder will happen in reality. Only the character of the detective remained. He received the name Roderick Alleyn. Aristocrat, thinker, polymath began to act when he was about forty.
He has not changed over the course of fifty novels. Usually all heroes are bachelors. Alleyn had a wife, the artist Agatha Troy. In her image, the writer encrypted some of her own traits. Even the outwardly shy and thin tall person in trousers was noticeably reminiscent of the author's contemporaries.
Marsh herself never married, she did not have a single child. Personal life was carefully hidden from strangers. Heroes of Marsh often quarrel, but they are happy in marriage. Agatha plays the role of Watson, sometimes transferring this role to journalist Nigel Busgate.
Features of creativity
Alleyn is well versed in art, particularly theatrical. But he is a living person, not immune from mistakes. True, he covers up doubts with dispassion. The debut novel was called The Murder Game. Since its release in 1934, it has been a success. The following year, a new book was completed with the title Murderer, Your Way Out.
Marsh published new compositions annually. The failure occurred only during the Second World War. For half a month, Nio worked as a driver, transporting the wounded on a hospital bus.
All of Marsh's books are emphatically theatrical. The plays are reminiscent of the list of characters at the beginning, and the ending is called the last act. Since in the theater the writer learned to desire everything, up to the creation of the scenery, she turned out to be a good director as well. The author of detective stories has become a kind of demiurge-creator of reality. March was interested not so much in the details of the murders as in the living characters of the characters.
The compositions are in no small measure conditional theatrical. The author offers a kind of game, the rules of which are agreed in advance. Thus, in the novel “Constables at Every Step,” a gang of international art falsifiers gathers on a small steamer.
Marsh inherited a raincoat, which, according to legend, was once worn by the famous Keene. Later, the writer gave it to Laurence Olivier. In the fall of 1928, Marsh went to visit England. She did not think about literature, spending time in high life and opening a small company with a friend.
Recognition and awards
The level of the writer's works turned out to be professional from the very beginning. The canon is observed almost everywhere: the unity of place and action, a limited circle of actors. But inside and the details of the sheep's hair, and suspicions of espionage. In Death at the Dolphin Theater, critics discovered a witty satire on the most complicated relationships in the theater environment. Later, the situation was called "like-minded terrarium".
Nio Marsh preferred traditional English mystery novels. By the ingenuity of the plot, she is close to Agatha Christie. Thanks to theatricalization, the action becomes grotesque. Very often it is emphasized by a cunning method of murder, for example, a pistol firing from a piano.
The literary merits of the writer did not go unnoticed. In 1966 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England. In 1978 she received the Grandmaster Award for Best of the Best, awarded by the American Detective Association.
Even after eighty, the writer has not lost the liveliness of the pen. She continued to create in a slightly old-fashioned and unhurried manner, arguing that the world was not completely spoiled, and that evil in the form of unworthy individuals would be easily defeated by good.
Marsh's last novel was The Light Fading. After its completion on February 18, 1982, the writer herself passed away.
