Daly, Elizabeth

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DALY, Elizabeth

Born 15 October 1878, New York, New York; died 2 September 1967, Port Washington, New York

Daughter of Emma (Barker) and Joseph Francis Daly

Elizabeth Daly was the author of 16 crime novels popular during the 1940s and 1950s, all featuring Henry Gamadge, a genteel, intelligent, upper-class man who was an expert on antiquarian books, maps, prints, autographs, and other documents. Agatha Christie once named Daly her favorite American mystery writer, and in fact Daly's work has often been compared to Christie's and those of other writers from the British Golden Age of detective fiction, including Arthur Conan Doyle.

Daly was born in 1878 in New York City. Her father was a County of New York Supreme Court justice and her uncle was Augustin Daly, a noted 1890s playwright and theatrical producer. Daly's writing career began during her teens, when periodicals such as Puck, Life, and Scribner's published her short prose and poetry works. After graduating with a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 1901 and an M.A. from Columbia University in 1902, Daly worked as a tutor and a producer of amateur theater. She did not write a detective story until she was in her thirties. She was in her sixties when her first book, Unexpected Night (1940), was published. She went on to write 15 more crime novels and one general fiction title, all from 1940 to 1951. Daly won an Edgar Allan Poe award in 1960 from the Mystery Writers of America.

Unexpected Night introduces Henry Gamadge, who returned as the protagonist of all her full-length detective stories. Gamadge is the opposite of the "hard-boiled" fictional detectives popular at the time. "He's the semi-bookish type, but not pretentious," Daly said of Gamadge. "He's not good-looking, but eye-catching….He knows a lot, but doesn't talk about it. He is basically kind, but at times can be ruthless." Over the course of the 16 novels in which he stars, Gamadge acquires a staff, a wife, a family, and two pets, all of which become recurring characters. Gamadge lives in New York's fashionable Murray Hill district and is essentially unemployed, but accepts frequent commissions as an expert on old books and papers. Nearly all of Daly's novels hinge on a work of literature or a literary situation. Murders in Volume 2 (1941) features the poetry of Byron, The Book of the Dead (1944) revolves around Shakespeare's The Tempest, The Wrong Way Down (1946) centers on a Bartolozzi engraving of a Holbein portrait, The Book of the Lion (1948) involves a lost Chaucer manuscript, and the solution of Death and Letters (1950), one of her last and most acclaimed novels, relies on the discovery of the secret sale of a Victorian poet's love letters.

Daly is probably best known for her complex plots, which involve crimes of forgery, theft, and murder and incorporate everything from reincarnations to apparitions, in addition to literary clues. She was especially commended for her unexpected resolutions. Will Cuppy of the New York Herald Tribune said of Deadly Nightshade (1940): "The plot thickens amazingly toward the end, with a flurry of romantic gambits, and Miss Daly proves herself as deft at juggling hints as the armchair sleuth could wish." Similarly, Isaac Anderson commented in the New York Times Book Review on Evidence of Things Seen (1943): "So ingenious is the plot of this story that we feel safe in predicting that most readers will be completely fooled and will then wonder how they ever happened to muff the solution."

The Gamadge novels take place among wealthy New York society, a group of individuals who are not greatly interested in or affected by the lower classes, crime, or even World War II. At times, both Daly's writing style and her character Gamadge were criticized as "over-urbane," "precious," and "self-consciously literary," but readers and reviewers generally felt compensated for those drawbacks by her ingenious plotting. While her work was most often considered light and civilized, Daly herself felt detective fiction was a high form of literature that brought with it great responsibilities for the author.

Other books featuring Gamadge include The House Without the Door (1942), Nothing Can Rescue Me (1943), Arrow Pointing Nowhere (1944), Any Shape or Form (1945), Somewhere in the House (1946), Night Walk (1947), And Dangerous to Know (1949), and The Book of the Crime (1951).

In 1941 Daly wrote her only nonmystery and her sole book without Gamadge. Called The Street Has Changed, the novel (her fourth) was a 40-year saga set in the world of New York theater. The work was praised—in part for her supposed extensive research, which Daly claimed was not necessary since she had grown up in a theatrical family—but she never broke away from the detective genre again.

Bibliography:

Reference Works:

Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature (1991). CANR 60 (1998). CLC 52 (1989). 20th Century Crime and Mystery Writers (1985). World Authors 1900-1950 (1996).