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Black Beech and Honeydew
The new series of Ngaio Marsh editions concludes with a new edition of her autobiography. What sort of person was Ngaio Marsh, whose detective novels made her name known throughout the world? With all the insight and sense of style her readers have come to expect of her, her autobiography reveals the influences and environment that have shaped her personality. Widely acclaimed when first published in 1965, Black Beech and Honeydew is a sensitive account of Ngaio Marsh's childhood and adolescence in Christchurch and the establishment of her theatre and writing careers both there and in the UK. It captures all the joys, fears and hopes of a spirited young woman growing up and transmits an artist's gradual awareness of the special flavour of life in New Zealand and the individual character of its landscape. Fully revised and updated in 1981, this new edition is reissued 21 years later as a commemoration of Ngaio Marsh's life and work. It is a sanguine, poised, unpretentious, thoughtful and often moving record of a full life, and -- despite its unavailability for nearly 20 years -- has been acclaimed as her most distinguished work. No one who had read and enjoyed any of Ngaio Marsh's 32 novels can afford to overlook this gifted and charming autobiography.
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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201 people want to read
About the author
Ngaio Marsh
208 books826 followersDame Ngaio Marsh, born Edith Ngaio Marsh, was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre director. There is some uncertainty over her birth date as her father neglected to register her birth until 1900, but she was born in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.
Of all the "Great Ladies" of the English mystery's golden age, including Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh alone survived to publish in the 1980s. Over a fifty-year span, from 1932 to 1982, Marsh wrote thirty-two classic English detective novels, which gained international acclaim. She did not always see herself as a writer, but first planned a career as a painter.
Marsh's first novel, A MAN LAY DEAD (1934), which she wrote in London in 1931-32, introduced the detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn: a combination of Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey and a realistically depicted police official at work. Throughout the 1930s Marsh painted occasionally, wrote plays for local repertory societies in New Zealand, and published detective novels. In 1937 Marsh went to England for a period. Before going back to her home country, she spent six months travelling about Europe.
All her novels feature British CID detective Roderick Alleyn. Several novels feature Marsh's other loves, the theatre and painting. A number are set around theatrical productions (Enter a Murderer, Vintage Murder, Overture to Death, Opening Night, Death at the Dolphin, and Light Thickens), and two others are about actors off stage (Final Curtain and False Scent). Her short story "'I Can Find My Way Out" is also set around a theatrical production and is the earlier "Jupiter case" referred to in Opening Night. Alleyn marries a painter, Agatha Troy, whom he meets during an investigation (Artists in Crime), and who features in several later novels.
Series:
* Roderick Alleyn
Of all the "Great Ladies" of the English mystery's golden age, including Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh alone survived to publish in the 1980s. Over a fifty-year span, from 1932 to 1982, Marsh wrote thirty-two classic English detective novels, which gained international acclaim. She did not always see herself as a writer, but first planned a career as a painter.
Marsh's first novel, A MAN LAY DEAD (1934), which she wrote in London in 1931-32, introduced the detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn: a combination of Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey and a realistically depicted police official at work. Throughout the 1930s Marsh painted occasionally, wrote plays for local repertory societies in New Zealand, and published detective novels. In 1937 Marsh went to England for a period. Before going back to her home country, she spent six months travelling about Europe.
All her novels feature British CID detective Roderick Alleyn. Several novels feature Marsh's other loves, the theatre and painting. A number are set around theatrical productions (Enter a Murderer, Vintage Murder, Overture to Death, Opening Night, Death at the Dolphin, and Light Thickens), and two others are about actors off stage (Final Curtain and False Scent). Her short story "'I Can Find My Way Out" is also set around a theatrical production and is the earlier "Jupiter case" referred to in Opening Night. Alleyn marries a painter, Agatha Troy, whom he meets during an investigation (Artists in Crime), and who features in several later novels.
Series:
* Roderick Alleyn
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 24, 2017
If you're looking for "how I became a writer," look elsewhere. If you're looking for the writer's experience, move on. Even if you're looking for details about the author's life and relationships, there isn't much here.
First published in 1966, a revised edition came out in the 80s. Perhaps someone spoke to her about the lack of information regarding writing itself; a few scraps were added in the last few pages, but not much at all.
For such an excellent writer of mysteries, the text is scrappy and disjointed in the extreme. I got heartily sick of the phrase "as will be shown later" and other constant repetitions. I also wondered what happened to the editing. Misplaced commas litter the text, and NZ regionalisms do not account for the misuse of words--"emergency" means something completely different from "emergence", but not in this book! She even refers to an imbalance as an "unbalance" and says "at this junction" when she means "juncture" (of events). Some of her expressions are odd; she speaks of "laying down a little cellar of experiences that would one day be served up as the table wines of detective cookery." Ouch!! Who's writing "fustian" now? But that's not all. Marsh repeatedly tells us that snobbishness is a family trait, and that is certainly bourne out by her memoir. I'm afraid by the time I had finished it I disliked the lady a great deal! She condescends to everyone and everything--the way her parents speak, her employers when she becomes an actress, even to the reader!
We are never really told how she started writing; it just sort of happened while she was busy doing other things, or so she implies. Interesting that she saw herself first as a painter, then an actress/director--and as a writer only incidentally, a long way down the list of what's important to her. About halfway through the book, she joins a touring company and suddenly Marsh-the-author starts breaking the fourth wall to editorialise on theatre of that time, then of the time of writing, then on Shakespeare in general. I love Shakespeare myself, but in reading a memoir I don't want yards of the author's interpretations of Shakespeare as a writer, or--God help us--"what he meant" or a looong discourse on How Shakespeare Should Be Done, including a gratuitous essay on Shakespeare on Death.
To top it off, Marsh absolutely kills herself trying to keep it all anonymous, unless she's dropping names of the great and the good who are either her personal friends or students she herself set on the path to fame. She won't even name family members, but instead makes up coy little nicknames for them such as "the gunner". Calling herself "one" very often just made the text that much more stilted in spots: "One thought that..."
Having just read Vintage Murder, I was right about Marsh's take on the perceived (by her) lack of racial tensions and problems in New Zealand. According to her, The frictions and prejudices that undoubtedly exist spring from differences of behaviour, not from past injuries on the scale of the gigantic infamies in America and Africa. We are a picture in miniature of what happens when the dominant race adopts a civilized attitude and inevitably blunders from time to time in the effort to realise its ideals. And I quote. It's not racism, it's just that the poor Maoris got it wrong, don't you know! They just didn't know how to act! And besides, in such a small country it doesn't really matter. Right? Riiiight.
By the last quarter of the book I found myself skimming the self-congratulatory passages on her great career as a director, and not liking the author very much at all. I also kept having to put the book down and read something else to get the taste of her self-satisfaction out of my mouth. Hardly surprising she never married, and not just because she was a member of the WW1 generation.
First published in 1966, a revised edition came out in the 80s. Perhaps someone spoke to her about the lack of information regarding writing itself; a few scraps were added in the last few pages, but not much at all.
For such an excellent writer of mysteries, the text is scrappy and disjointed in the extreme. I got heartily sick of the phrase "as will be shown later" and other constant repetitions. I also wondered what happened to the editing. Misplaced commas litter the text, and NZ regionalisms do not account for the misuse of words--"emergency" means something completely different from "emergence", but not in this book! She even refers to an imbalance as an "unbalance" and says "at this junction" when she means "juncture" (of events). Some of her expressions are odd; she speaks of "laying down a little cellar of experiences that would one day be served up as the table wines of detective cookery." Ouch!! Who's writing "fustian" now? But that's not all. Marsh repeatedly tells us that snobbishness is a family trait, and that is certainly bourne out by her memoir. I'm afraid by the time I had finished it I disliked the lady a great deal! She condescends to everyone and everything--the way her parents speak, her employers when she becomes an actress, even to the reader!
We are never really told how she started writing; it just sort of happened while she was busy doing other things, or so she implies. Interesting that she saw herself first as a painter, then an actress/director--and as a writer only incidentally, a long way down the list of what's important to her. About halfway through the book, she joins a touring company and suddenly Marsh-the-author starts breaking the fourth wall to editorialise on theatre of that time, then of the time of writing, then on Shakespeare in general. I love Shakespeare myself, but in reading a memoir I don't want yards of the author's interpretations of Shakespeare as a writer, or--God help us--"what he meant" or a looong discourse on How Shakespeare Should Be Done, including a gratuitous essay on Shakespeare on Death.
To top it off, Marsh absolutely kills herself trying to keep it all anonymous, unless she's dropping names of the great and the good who are either her personal friends or students she herself set on the path to fame. She won't even name family members, but instead makes up coy little nicknames for them such as "the gunner". Calling herself "one" very often just made the text that much more stilted in spots: "One thought that..."
Having just read Vintage Murder, I was right about Marsh's take on the perceived (by her) lack of racial tensions and problems in New Zealand. According to her, The frictions and prejudices that undoubtedly exist spring from differences of behaviour, not from past injuries on the scale of the gigantic infamies in America and Africa. We are a picture in miniature of what happens when the dominant race adopts a civilized attitude and inevitably blunders from time to time in the effort to realise its ideals. And I quote. It's not racism, it's just that the poor Maoris got it wrong, don't you know! They just didn't know how to act! And besides, in such a small country it doesn't really matter. Right? Riiiight.
By the last quarter of the book I found myself skimming the self-congratulatory passages on her great career as a director, and not liking the author very much at all. I also kept having to put the book down and read something else to get the taste of her self-satisfaction out of my mouth. Hardly surprising she never married, and not just because she was a member of the WW1 generation.
August 16, 2008
I thought I'd try Ngaio Marsh's autobiography, thinking her life in New Zealand and on the stage and writing could be interesting. I just couldn't really get into it---the writing style is roundabout, dwelling on one memory, then the next. Still kind of interesting, but I decided to leave it I realized I'd read five or six books from the to-read shelf while I was still "reading" this one.
December 26, 2012
very very frustrated with this book as it didnt give any real prominence to her life as a writer of crime novels. I wanted to understand why she had started writing them, where she got her ideas from and how her own life was reflected in her novels. What I read was all about her life as an actor, a producer and director of plays....
June 19, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in January 2000.
In the life of Ngaio Marsh, there are three major themes: her New Zealand background, her love of the theatre, and her writing of detective novels. Her autobiography, first published in the sixties and revised a few years before her death, concentrates on the first two to the virtual exclusion of the third. More is said of the journalism which began her writing career than of the Alleyn series. There are many possible reasons why she might do this, but I suspect that it is mainly that writing is not a spectacularly interesting activity to write about. Once a writer has answered the questions "Where do you get your ideas from?" and "Are your characters based on real people?" there isn't much to say. Marsh doesn't really answer the first question, but the answer to the second is definitely yes.The reader is introduced to the Lampreys, close friends of Marsh only marginally less irritating than their fictional versions.
The major interest in the autobiography is the story of Marsh's involvement in the theatre. Her contributions to the development of New Zealand based theatre were important enough for them to be the reason she was awarded the DBE rather than her writing. She was an actress, but was best known for her direction, especially of Shakespeare. Shakespeare was considered too difficult for New Zealand audiences, but British touring companies had some success, and so did Marsh with companies made up principally of students. It always seems that a good production of Shakespeare can be understood and enjoyed by any audience; it is the way that he is taught in schools and the immensity of his reputation that put people off.
In the end, this is not an autobiography which reveals much about its subject; it tells us little that cannot be picked up from the detective stories - the love of theatre and of her country of origin comes across quite strongly in several of them.
In the life of Ngaio Marsh, there are three major themes: her New Zealand background, her love of the theatre, and her writing of detective novels. Her autobiography, first published in the sixties and revised a few years before her death, concentrates on the first two to the virtual exclusion of the third. More is said of the journalism which began her writing career than of the Alleyn series. There are many possible reasons why she might do this, but I suspect that it is mainly that writing is not a spectacularly interesting activity to write about. Once a writer has answered the questions "Where do you get your ideas from?" and "Are your characters based on real people?" there isn't much to say. Marsh doesn't really answer the first question, but the answer to the second is definitely yes.The reader is introduced to the Lampreys, close friends of Marsh only marginally less irritating than their fictional versions.
The major interest in the autobiography is the story of Marsh's involvement in the theatre. Her contributions to the development of New Zealand based theatre were important enough for them to be the reason she was awarded the DBE rather than her writing. She was an actress, but was best known for her direction, especially of Shakespeare. Shakespeare was considered too difficult for New Zealand audiences, but British touring companies had some success, and so did Marsh with companies made up principally of students. It always seems that a good production of Shakespeare can be understood and enjoyed by any audience; it is the way that he is taught in schools and the immensity of his reputation that put people off.
In the end, this is not an autobiography which reveals much about its subject; it tells us little that cannot be picked up from the detective stories - the love of theatre and of her country of origin comes across quite strongly in several of them.
October 25, 2013
If you're interested in life in New Zealand and theatre and art, this is a lovely book. But if you were hoping to hear about Ngaio Marsh's life as a novelist and mystery writer, it's just not there. She mentions the books she's writing... throws in a comment here and there about characters... but there's really nothing about the writing life. On the other hand, for the theatre buff, it's chock full of plays, actors, quirks of theatres, touring stories, etc.
August 17, 2013
Read this because of her detective novels, and learned next to nothing about that aspect of her life. As they do include a lot about the theatre it was interesting to see how much a part of her life that was
September 17, 2012
I was disappointed that there was so little about the writing of her detective novels, though I liked the parts about the theatre and acting.
August 26, 2013
I read this as part of an omnibus with "Photo-finish" and "Light thickens". I enjoyed it but I should mention that she hardly says anything about her detective novels.
October 25, 2024
This is a peculiar autobiography (according to my lights) because in it, Ngaio Marsh (the writer of detective stories) talks very little about writing detective stories, little about the key emotional moments in her life, and mostly about her experience in the theatre. Specifically she waxes eloquent about her experience directing Shakespeare's plays with student actors in New Zealand. Which sounds thrilling, and I'm all for it, and if the book had, perhaps, been better balanced in its content I would have appreciated those parts of it more. As it is, I feel vaguely cheated on several fronts. I think I most enjoyed the first part of the book, about her growing-up years.
January 8, 2024
What a fascinating woman who lived life on her own terms.
May 16, 2011
This memoir of a naive girl and young woman whose life in the theater began in the early 1920s was appealing for its evocation of place - Christchurch and Westland - and characters - especially her parents - more than for any great insights or revelations into her life. She is deliberately discreet and says very little about her detective novels, though fans of "A Surfeit of Lampreys" will meet the real family (under the Lamprey pseudonym) in these pages. Gets a fourth star because of its NZ setting.
February 18, 2008
Ngaio Marsh's autobiography--a very entertaining picture of a fascinating life of a writer, theater director and actor, who lived a long, full life on several continents.
January 21, 2010
A very interesting autobiography. Rather dreamlike, episodic, and very discreet, but full of interesting characters and places.
August 15, 2011
very interesting.
May 2, 2017
Fascinating account of the early years of New Zealand mystery author Ngaio Marsh.
April 27, 2017
Biography
Was surprised when I started to read as l thought it was going to be one of the Alleyn murder mysteries?
Was surprised when I started to read as l thought it was going to be one of the Alleyn murder mysteries?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews