Asked for a short story by Julian Symons
in 1978, for a volume in aid of the Detection Club
and specified to include trial by jury, she turned in the brilliant Morepork (titled from the...
Literary responses
Margery Allingham
Anticipation about the latest MA
resulted in a reprint even before publication date. 10,000 copies sold within two weeks.
Martin, Richard, 1934 -. Ink in Her Blood: The Life and Crime Fiction of Margery Allingham. UMI Research Press, 1988.
211
Reviews varied from lukewarm to downright negative, which MA
attributed to her position as an...
Literary responses
Beryl Bainbridge
Reviews were disappointing. The Observer's majestic dismissal was not out of tune with others: this novel spectacularly fails to convince that there is hard imaginative currency supporting its considerable literary pretension.
NB
's second book, The Odd Flamingo, 1954, another crime novel, has been described by Julian Symons
as a sinister fairy tale rather than of grubby actuality. He included The Odd Flamingo in his...
Literary responses
Elaine Feinstein
Again reviewers were highly complimentary. Julian Symons
in the Sunday Times praised the care with which EF
had shaped her book, and her fine sense of the way in which people . . . think...
Literary responses
Josephine Tey
The Daughter of Time was extremely well received when it was first published, and it remains Tey's best-known work. Crime writer Anthony Boucher
gave it high praise for originality: The result is a real bouleversement...
Literary responses
Nina Hamnett
Julian Symons
in the TLS called this an extraordinary compound of personal stories, tall stories, and good or bad jokes, which takes its colour—and a vivid colour too—from Miss Hamnett's personality.
The TLS published two notices of contradictory tone in a single issue. The first reviewer, from the Manchester Guardian, found the collection brilliantly successful and EW
possessed of a remarkable power of creating a...
Reception
Alice Munro
More than her previous collection, this volume established AM
's reputation. In Britain she was hailed by Julian Symons
as interesting . . . remarkable, and (along with Margaret Atwood
) as distinctly Canadian...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Symons, Julian. “Fiction”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2531, p. 481.