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Edith Ngaio Marsh (1895 - 1982)
Ngaio Marsh was acclaimed internationally as a detective story writer, but in Christchurch she was better known as an amazingly successful director for the University Drama Society. The daughter of a clerk, she was educated at St Margaret’s College and the Canterbury College School of Arts and a career as an artist or professional actress seemed to offer fulfillment. But if she loved the stage, she devoted her energies to becoming a writer of crime fiction and in the 1930s was crowned as one of the 'Queens of Crime' alongside such figures as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. She published 32 novels in London, Boston and New York as well as a number of essays, plays and one enigmatic autobiography, Black Beech and Honeydew (1966). Her skill as a novelist led her admirers to assert that she reigned supreme for excellence of style and characterization and Newsweek defined her novels as 'the best whodunits ever written.' The New York Times called her New Zealand’s best known literary figure. Dame Ngaio rather deprecated crime fiction, though sometimes she asserted its worth. "It is a form that can command our aesthetic approval,' she noted. 'It is, by its nature, shapely.'
Charismatic, distinctive and domineering, she made an impact on young writers, editors and, especially aspiring young actors. Mervyn Thompson found her 'a tall, terrifying woman in black,' whose writing was 'glib as the nib of a Conway Stewart.' Then he praised her for nurturing the gifts of youthful actors and writers. Bruce Mason praised her as 'den-mother to a horde of the talented young for more than 40 years.' It was a golden age for drama in the city.
She was awarded an honourary D.Litt. by the University of Canterbury, at which she made an enormous impact with her productions of Shakespeare, in particular; an M.B.E. was followed by Dame Commander. By the end of her long career, Dame Ngaio was a living legend. Her home in Cashmere has become a museum.
Sources
The Christchurch Writer’s Walkway, E. Beardsley, Canterbury Branch, New Zealand Society of Authors, 1999.
