Simpson, Helen (1897–1940)

Australian-born British writer now best known for her detective novels. Born Helen de Guerry Simpson on December 1, 1897, in Sydney, Australia; died during the German bombing of London on October 14, 1940; daughter of Edward Percy Simpson (a solicitor) and Anne (de Lauret) Simpson; attended Sacred Heart Convent and Abbotsleigh, both in Australia; studied in France; studied music at Oxford; married Denys (or Denis) John Browne, in 1927; children: daughter Clemence.

Selected writings:

Pan in Pimlico: A Fantasy in One Act (1924); The Baseless Fabric (1925); Acquittal (1925); Cups, Wands, and Swords (1927); Mumbudget (1928); (with Clemence Dane) Enter Sir John (1928); The Desolate House (1929); (with Dane) Printer's Devil (1930); 'Vantage Striker (1931); Boomerang (1932); (with Dane) Re-Enter Sir John (1932); The Woman on the Beast: Viewed From Three Angles (1933); The Spanish Marriage (1933); Henry VIII (biography, 1934); Saraband for Dead Lovers (1935); The Female Felon (1935); Under Capricorn (1937); (with Dane) A Woman Among Wild Men: Mary Kingsley (biography, 1938); Maid No More (1940).

Helen Simpson was born in Sydney, Australia, on December 1, 1897, of aristocratic French lineage. After attending schools in New South Wales, she left Australia at age 16 to pursue further education in Europe. During World War I, from 1914 to 1918, Simpson worked as a decoder, unscrambling secret messages for the British Admiralty. She went on to study music at Oxford University, where she was one of the earliest women undergraduates. Her acquaintance at Oxford with fellow mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers and others led her to become a charter member of the Detection Club. Simpson produced a wide range of work during her lifetime, including plays, novels, translations from the French, histories, biographies, and even recipe books. Her claim to fame, however, rests in her five mystery or detective novels, three of which were written in collaboration with Clemence Dane .

Simpson had already published a number of works, including seven plays, a book of poetry, and a book of short stories, prior to her collaboration with Dane. Her first novel, Acquittal (1925), was allegedly written in only 21 days, to win a bet. More of a psychological study than a crime novel, it begins with the heroine's acquittal on a charge of murdering her husband and ends with her having to choose between two suitors, one of whom unquestioningly accepts her innocence; the other, less convinced, does not care.

Simpson's literary collaboration with Dane began with Enter Sir John, published in 1928. The protagonist of this mystery and the two that followed, Printer's Devil (1930) and Re-Enter Sir John (1932), is an actor-manager of an English theater, probably the product of Dane's background as a playwright. Like a number of fictional English detectives, Sir John is an amateur at solving crimes who first tries his hand at it while attempting to overturn the murder conviction of a young actress named Martella; in the course of the novel, he both uncovers the real criminal and falls in love with Martella. All three of the Simpson-Dane novels feature a fully realized world of the theater in which recurring characters, complex from the start, develop further in each story. They also share a dark view of human personality, highlighting the possibilities of mental dissociation, something approaching split personality, not only in the criminals but, to a lesser yet still significant degree, in Sir John and Martella.

Between the second and third installments of the Sir John series, Simpson wrote 'Vantage Striker, which stands as evidence that she was responsible for the darker strains in their collaborative work. Written in the politically charged atmosphere of England in 1931, the novel features two main characters who become suspects when the British prime minister is murdered. The novel was less frivolous than Simpson's work with Dane, but its close association with the tense politics of 1930s England has caused it to become somewhat dated with the passage of time.

Although she never lived permanently in Australia after moving to England, Simpson used an Australian setting for two of her most famous works of fiction: Boomerang (1932) and Under Capricorn (1937). The former, a saga covering four generations of a family of French descent, not unlike Simpson's own family, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Under Capricorn, the story of an Irish ex-convict's marriage to an aristocratic Irish woman, set in Simpson's homeland of New South Wales, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1949, with Ingrid Bergman and Michael Wilding in the lead roles. Her 1935 novel Saraband for Dead Lovers would also be filmed, in 1948 (released in the U.S. as simply Saraband), starring Stewart Granger, Joan Greenwood , and Flora Robson .

Among the other books Simpson wrote were a translation from the French of Heartsease and Honesty, being the Pastimes of the Sieur de Grammont, Steward to the Duc de Richelieu in Touraine (1935), a book of recipes for cold food, and (with Dane) a biography of the intrepid Victorian traveler Mary Kingsley , A Woman Among Wild Men (1938). She also worked as a radio broadcaster, and in 1938 ran unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate on the Isle of Wight. In October 1940, during World War II, Simpson died unexpectedly of shock brought on after German bombers attacked the London hospital in which she was recuperating from an operation. She was 42.

sources:

Hayne, Barrie. "Helen Simpson," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 77: British Mystery Writers, 1920–1939. Edited by Bernard Benstock and Thomas F. Staley. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1989.

Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, eds. Twentieth Century Authors. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1942.

Reilly, John M., ed. Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers. NY: St. Martin's Press, 1980.

Wilde, William H., Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Lisa C. Groshong , freelance writer, Columbia, Missouri