Ellis Peters' Books | Crime Books

Biography

Ellis Peters is the pen name of Edith Pargeter(1913–1995). Peters was born in Shropshire, on the Welsh borders. She lived there all her life except for a brief period spent as a Wren in Liverpool during the Second World War.

A Self-Taught Scholar

Peters never attended university, though she became a self-educated scholar. British history and also the culture and language of Czechoslovakia enthralled Peters. In 1968 the Czechoslovak Society for International Relations awarded her a Gold Medal for her translations of Czechoslovakian prose and poetry. Her writing also won her an honorary master’s degree from the University of Birmingham.

She wrote her first novel whilst working as a pharmacist assistant. Hortensius, friend of Nero wasn’t a stand-out success, but she persevered. Her forte was well-researched works of both non-fiction and fiction.

Fact Versus Fiction

She took the pen name Ellis Peters to distinguish her non-fiction historical works from her crime novels. Under that name, she wrote a series of stories about policeman George False and his son Dominic. They won her the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Death and the Joyful Woman. Peters also wrote several standalone thrillers. Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! was a story about a crook who tries to frame a hitchhiker for arson and murder, but his plans go awry.

Peters, like P.D. James, only became really successful in retirement. In 1977, at the age of 64, she published her first story about the monk and erstwhile crusader Brother Cadfael. Set in the 12th century, these historical cosy crime novels sold over six and a half million copies. They propelled her to bestseller status.

The Birth of Historical Crime Fiction

Ellis Peters’ books show a fine eye for characters and plots. Her understanding of medicines makes her books a more than pleasant way to pass the time. But the thing that sets them apart is her understanding of history. She lets you taste (though fortunately not smell) life in the Middle Ages.

While her chief protagonist — Brother Cadfael — is fictional, his backstory is plausible, though unlikely. He left his home in Wales to join the First Crusade and then stayed in the Holy Land. Here he learned about herbal medicine. He returned to become a monk in England after spending time as a sailor around the Mediterranean. Tending a monastic herb garden was how he decided to see out his years.

The critical events in her novels — the hanging of an entire garrison of soldiers in a castle after its capture or the reinterment of St Winifred’s bones in Shrewsbury Abbey — are actual historical events which she appropriated for her purposes. Many of her characters also existed. There was a prior Robert Pennant. He rose to become the Abbot of Shrewsbury, so he may well have been as driven and egotistical as the character in Peter’s books.

Twisting Historical Truths

Peters tried hard to ensure that her novels were factually accurate, twisting historical truth with fiction to spin her stories.

“When I wrote the first Cadfael book, A Morbid Taste for Bones, I wasn’t planning on a series. It’s the only one in which I altered a historical event or two, in a minor way, and that’s come home to me since.” (Mother Earth Living)

Peter’s novels were so successful that she became known as the father — or mother — of historical fiction. The British Crime Writers Association inaugurated their first Historical Dagger in her name in 1999.

There is, however, one element of Peter’s stories that is a little historically incongruous. Did Brother Cadfael understand the ideas behind forensic investigation 800 years before their time? Or was he simply an astute and observant man?