Edmund Crispin:

A Bibliography


Edmund Crispin was born in 1921 of Scots-Irish parentage. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' and St. John's College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages. He has been a pianist, organist (c.f. THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY and HOLY DISORDERS), and conductor since the age of fourteen and was for two years an assistant master at a public school (c.f. LOVE LIES BLEEDING). He travelled a certain amount before the war, where he totally failed to prognosticate the subsequent course of events.

Edmund Crispin's real name is Bruce Montgomery, and he is a composer as well as a writer. His recreations are swimming, excessive smoking, Shakespeare (c.f. LOVE LIES BLEEDING), the operas of Wagner and Strauss (c.f. SWAN SONG), idleness, and cats (c.f. THE LONG DIVORCE). His antipathies are dogs (c.f. LOVE LIES BLEEDING), the French Film, the Renaissance of the British Film (c.f. FREQUENT HEARSES), psychoanalysis (c.f. HOLY DISORDERS), the psychological-realistic crime story, and the contemporary theatre (c.f. THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY). His favourite detective novelist is John Dickson Carr.

Mr. Crispin is the author of nine detective stories and two volumes of short stories.

Back cover biography from the 1958 Penguin editions. Italicised brackets are my own notes.


Those nine novels were:

  1. The Case of the Gilded Fly / Obsequies at Oxford (1944)
  2. Holy Disorders (1945)
  3. The Moving Toyshop (1946)
  4. Swan Song / Dead and Dumb (1947)
  5. Love Lies Bleeding (1948)
  6. Buried for Pleasure (1948)
  7. Frequent Hearses / Sudden Vengeance (1950)
  8. The Long Divorce / A Noose for Her (1951)
  9. The Glimpses of the Moon (1977)

And his short story collections:

  1. Beware of the Trains (1953)
  2. Fen Country (1979)

The best of Crispin's books? The Case of the Gilded Fly, Swan Song, Love Lies Bleeding, and The Long Divorce.

Crispin's series detective was Professor Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. He is always described as 'a tall, lanky man, about forty years of age, with a cheerful, lean, ruddy, clean-shaven face. His dark hair, sedulously plastered down with water, stuck up in spikes at the crown.' He is usually to be seen wearing 'an enormous raincoat and carried an enormous hat.' Fen is a remarkably well-drawn character—although he is eccentric and often childish (he suffers from hypochondria and arrogance to an alarming degree), Crispin manages to imbue him with both dignity and a seriousness of intent, even in his most childish moments. He suffers from sudden interests in miscellaneous subjects (perhaps Crispin's comment on the omniscient sleuths with their intimate knowledge of dust and Egyptian hieroglyphics), including lepidoptery and politics. It is, however, his role as a professor of literature which stands him in good stead in his cases—the nonsense poems of Edward Lear, the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of Pope. Professor Fen is always an engaging character, and one of the most loveable detectives in fiction.

All of Crispin's books are readily available from Amazon or Amazon U.K., although for the rarer titles—The Long Divorce and Beware of the Trains—I would recommend a search on Bibliofind or ABE.


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