Poulson, Christine

views updated

POULSON, Christine

PERSONAL: Married; children: one daughter, two stepchildren. Education: Ph.D. (art history).

ADDRESSES: Home—Derbyshire, England. Agent—c/o Bob Tanner, International Scripts, 1A Kidbrooke Park Road, Blackheath, London SE3 6ER, England. E-mail—christine@christinepoulson.co.uk.

CAREER: Educator and scholar. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England, former curator of ceramics; William Morris Society, Hammersmith, London, England, former curator of Kelmscott House; Open University, London, tutor; Homerton College, Cambridge, Cambridge, England, senior lecturer in history of art; University of Cambridge, Cambridge, member of faculty of architecture and history of art; Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Sheffield, England, currently research fellow.

AWARDS, HONORS: Mythopoeic Award shortlist, 2002, for The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840-1920.

WRITINGS:

William Morris, Apple Press (London, England), 1989.

(Editor) William Morris on Art and Design, Sheffield Academic Press (Sheffield, England), 1996.

The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840-1920, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Dead Letters ("Cassandra James" mystery novel), Robert Hale (London, England), 2002, published as Murder Is Academic: A Cambridge Mystery, St. Martin's Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Stage Fright ("Cassandra James" mystery novel), Robert Hale (London, England), 2003, St. Martin's Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Tristan and Isolde: A Casebook, edited by Joan Tasker Grimbert, Garland (New York, NY), 1995; Re-framing the Pre-Raphaelites, edited by Ellen Harding, Scolar Press (London, England), 1996; William Morris: Centenary Essays, edited by Peter Faulkner and Peter Preston, Exeter University Press (Exeter, England), 1999; Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Volume 20, 2000; and Burne-Jones, Morris, and the Quest for the Holy Grail, William Morris Society (London, England), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: British writer Christine Poulson is an art historian and educator who has turned to writing mystery novels featuring Cassandra Elizabeth James. In a review of Poulson's The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, 1840-1920 for Victorian Studies, Debra N. Mancoff commented on the author's academic work: "Poulson's involvement with the study of the legend [of the Grail] spans the course of its revival in scholarly investigation. Her contributions to the field have been steadily forthcoming and valuable, most notably her catalogues of artists who interpreted the legend and of the subjects represented in the visual arts that appeared in the 1989 and 1990 volumes of Arthurian Literature. Over the years, Poulson has acquired an almost unparalleled fluency with the production of Arthurian imagery, as well as a broad knowledge of the social, political, and cultural issues relevant to the study of the Victorian era."

Poulson's fiction work features Cassandra James, a twice-divorced professor of English at St. Etheldreda's College, Cambridge, who is a scholar of Victorian literature and history. She makes her first appearance in Dead Letters, which was published in the United States as Murder Is Academic: A Cambridge Mystery. In this tale, Cassandra finds the body of her friend, English department head Margaret Joplin, floating in a swimming pool together with a number of student exams. She is subsequently named Margaret's replacement, as well as her estate's executor. In her grief, Cassandra, who is newly divorced, is careless about contraception and becomes pregnant. More problems come in the form of the head of the college, who demands that Cassandra pressure her colleagues to get published; meanwhile, Cassandra begins to suspect she may suffer the same fate as her predecesor. A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that "Poulson's debut offers charming proof of Raymond Chandler's remark about the viciousness with which academics pursue their careers." Writing in Publishers Weekly, Peter Cannon noted that Poulson "adroitly shifts the focus of suspicion among several suspects and builds suspense to a high pitch," then delivers "a most satisfying conclusion."

In Stage Fright Cassandra, who is now on maternity leave, becomes involved in a stage production. The director is attempting to revive his career, and a newcomer, who is making a documentary, is intent on launching his. When leading lady Melissa disappears, Cassandra suspects that it is not just a case of stage fright: Melissa's six-month-old daughter Agnes was left behind! As Cassandra investigates the disappearance and begins to uncover the truth, it becomes apparent that she and her own infant are also in danger.

Poulson told CA: "The idea for my first novel arrived from nowhere while I was in a state of high tension writing the conclusion of The Quest for the Grail to a deadline. "What if a woman discovers a body and gets pregnant in the same week? What if the baby and the solution to the mystery arrive together in a startling denoument?" I had no intention of writing a novel, but the idea was so enticing that when I'd finished the academic book, I began to write Dead Letters.

"With my second novel it was rather different. The setting, an Edwardian theatre, came first, but again the "what if" moment arrived out of the blue. "What if a woman were to look into a cot expecting to see her baby there and…."But I don't want to give the plot away. Suffice it to say that the idea gave me the kind of a jolt that I want to give my readers.

"Ideas for novels tend to arrive when I am thinking about something else or not thinking at all. They float up to the surface during long walks, train journeys, even car journeys (as long as I'm not driving). The very best way for me to have an idea is to go on holiday or to be very preoccupied with some other task.

"But the idea is only the beginning. Then comes the hard work: outlines, notes, research, and then the first draft which will be followed by several more. I am especially concerned to be accurate in my depiction of the city of Cambridge and the surrounding fens, and to capture their unique, sometimes sinister atmosphere.

"I want my books to keep people up at night, but I hope too that the novel will stay with them and they will find themselves wondering about what they would have done in the place of my central character.

"I try to read widely in both fiction and nonfiction, for interest and enjoyment, and because I never know what will feed my own creative imagination. I go back again and again to Jane Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Henry James and Tolstoy. And one day I'm going to finish reading Proust! Favourite crime-writers include Henning Mankell, Simenon, Donna Leon, Lawrence Block, and Tony Hillerman. I like writers who evoke a strong sense of place and character. The most impressive contemporary novel that I've read recently is Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections."