Margery Allingham

MA , best-known as a detective writer of the earlier twentieth century, was highly professional in her reliance on her craft to make her an income. Though she called herself a slow worker, her exceptional rate of productivity almost never slackened. She drew a distinction between right-hand writing (serious books written to please herself) and left-hand writing in genres undertaken purely to keep her household afloat. After setting out with plays, she wrote mainly novels, with serialised fiction, stories, reviews, and occasionally lectures. Repeatedly she stated that now at last she was moving away from the mere thriller towards the detective story or mystery, or away from the detective towards the straight, serious novel. Always working with speed and facility, she seems always to have regarded the attainment of real authorship with a kind of awe.