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Celia Margaret Fremlin (20 June 1914 – 16 June 2009) was an English writer of mystery fiction.

Life

Celia was born in Ryarsh, Kent, England.^[1] She was the daughter of Heaver Fremlin and Margaret Addiscott.^[1] Her older brother, John H. Fremlin, later became a nuclear physicist.

Fremlin studied Classics at Somerville College, University of Oxford.^[1] From 1942 to 2000 she lived in Hampstead, London.^[1] In 1942 she married Elia Goller, with whom she had three children; he died in 1968.^[1] In 1985, Fremlin married Leslie Minchin, who died in 1999.^[1] Her many crime novels and stories helped modernize the sensation novel tradition by introducing criminal and (rarely) supernatural elements into domestic settings. Her 1958 novel The Hours Before Dawn won the Edgar Award in 1960.^[1]^[2]

Fremlin was involved in Mass-Observation during the war, and published War Factory with Tom Harrisson in 1943.^[1]^[2]

With Jeffrey Barnard, she was co-presenter of a BBC2 documentary, Night and Day, describing diurnal and nocturnal London, broadcast on 23 January 1987.

Fremlin was an advocate of assisted suicide and euthanasia. In a newspaper interview she admitted to assisting four people to die.^[3] In 1983 civil proceedings were brought against her as one of the five members of the EXIT Executive committee which had published A Guide to Self Deliverance, but the court refused to declare the booklet unlawful.^[4]

She was also involved with the Progressive League.^[1]

Writing

Lucy Lethbridge has written of Fremlin's work that "almost all her novels centring round the home as the harbour of a particularly horrible, intimate, terror".^[2]

Some of her novels have been reissued since her death.^[5]^[6] Notably, her 1959 book Uncle Paul was republished by Faber & Faber in the UK in June 2023.^[7]

Death

She died on 16 June 2009 in Bournemouth.

Bibliography

Manners and Society

1940 – The Seven Chars of Chelsea
1943 – War Factory (with Tom Harrisson)

Novels

1958 – The Hours Before Dawn; (Edgar Award for Best Novel, 1960)
1959 – Uncle Paul (Republished in the UK by Faber & Faber, June 2023)
1961 – Seven Lean Years (US: Wait for the Wedding)
1963 – The Trouble Makers
1964 – The Jealous One
1967 – Prisoner's Base
1969 – Possession
1972 – Appointment with Yesterday
1975 – The Long Shadow
1977 – The Spider-Orchid
1980 – With No Crying
1982 – The Parasite Person
1990 – Listening in the Dusk
1991 – Dangerous Thoughts
1993 – The Echoing Stones
1994 – King of the World

Collections

1970 – Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark
1974 – By Horror Haunted
1984 – A Lovely Day to Die
2019 - Ghostly Stories

Poetry

1996 – Duet in Verse (with Leslie Minchin)

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Kettlewell, Margaret (6 September 2009). "Celia Fremlin". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
^ ^a ^b ^c Lethbridge, Lucy. "Celia Fremlin saw the impoverished disappointment in 1950s London". The Oldie. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
^ "The good companion: Celia Fremlin is fit, happy and still busy writing crime novels in her eighties. But when it's time to go, she's determined she will go. She has helped four people in extremis to die. And she doesn't see why, some day, she shouldn't do the same for herself - legally." Guardian, 21 June 1997
^ "Striking Link between Suicides and Booklet", London Times, 19 April 1983
^ Wilson, Laura (5 December 2014). "The best crime and thrillers of 2014". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
^ Wilson, Laura (16 November 2018). "The best recent crime novels – review roundup". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
^ "Uncle Paul - Faber & Faber 2023". Faber & Faber Publishers. Retrieved 23 July 2023.