Margery Allingham

Early writings

While she was enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic she wrote a verse play, Dido and Aeneas, which was performed at St. George's Hall, London, and the Cripplegate Theatre, London. Allingham played the role of Dido and the scenery was designed by Philip Youngman Carter.^{[5][full citation needed]}

Her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, was published in 1923, when she was 19. It was allegedly based on a story she had heard during a séance, though later in life this was debunked by her husband. Nevertheless, Allingham continued to include occult themes in many of her novels. Blackkerchief Dick was well received, but was not a financial success. She wrote several plays in this period and attempted to write a serious novel, but finding that her themes clashed with her natural light-heartedness, she decided instead to try the mystery genre.

Campion and success

Her breakthrough occurred in 1929 with the publication of The Crime at Black Dudley. This introduced Albert Campion, initially as a minor character, thought to be a parody of Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey.^[6] Campion returned in Mystery Mile, thanks in part to pressure from her American publishers, who had been taken with the character.

With a strong central character and a format to work in, she began to produce a series of Campion novels. At first she also continued writing short stories and articles for magazines such as The Strand Magazine, but as her Campion saga went on her sales grew steadily. Campion proved so successful that Allingham made him the centrepiece of another 17 novels and more than 20 short stories, continuing into the 1960s. ^{[citation needed]}

Campion is a mysterious upper-class character (early novels hint that his family is in the line of succession to the throne), working under an assumed name. He floats between the upper echelons of the nobility and government on the one hand, and the shady world of the criminal class on the other, often accompanied by his scurrilous ex-burglar servant Magersfontein Lugg. During the course of his career Campion is sometimes a detective, sometimes an adventurer.

The first three Campion novels, The Crime at Black Dudley, Mystery Mile and Look to the Lady, were all written by what Allingham referred to as the "plum pudding" method, focused less on methods of murder or the formal strictures of the whodunit and more on mixing possibilities together.^[7] As the series progresses, however, Campion comes to work more closely with the police and MI6 counter-intelligence.^[8] He also falls in love, gets married and has a child, and as time goes by he grows in wisdom and matures emotionally.

The style and format of the books moved on: while the early novels are light-hearted whodunnits or "fantastical" adventures,^[8] The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) is more a character study than a crime novel, focusing on the serial killer Jack Havoc. In many of the later books Campion plays a subsidiary role, no more prominent than the roles of his wife Amanda and his police associates, and in the last novel he is a minor character.

In 1941 Allingham published a non-fiction work, The Oaken Heart, which describes her experiences in Essex when an invasion from Germany was expected and actively being planned for, potentially placing the civilian population of Essex in the front line.^[9]

Albert Campion novels and short stories

Short stories and novellas

Non-fiction

• Is Golf a Menace to Marriage?
• The Public Spirit of Francis Smith

Radio plays

• A Corner in Crime
• Room to Let (Nov. 1947)^[14][15](filmed in 1950)

Stage plays

• Water in a Sieve

Other works by Margery Allingham

• Blackkerchief Dick (1923)
• The White Cottage Mystery (1928)
• The Darings of the Red Rose (1930) Published anonymously in the Weekly Welcome magazine
• Black Plumes (1940)
• The Oaken Heart (1941: autobiographical)
• Dance of the Years (1943: also known as The Galantrys)
• Wanted: Someone Innocent (1946: novella and short stories)
  • Wanted: Someone Innocent
  • He Was Asking After You
  • The Sexton's Wife
  • 'Tis Not Hereafter
• Deadly Duo (1949: UK title Take Two at Bedtime (1950)) – two novellas:
  • Wanted: Someone Innocent
  • Last Act
• Take Two at Bedtime (1950) (novellas)
  • Last Act
  • Wanted: Someone Innocent
• No Love Lost (1954) (novellas)
  • The Patient at Peacocks Hall
  • Safer Than Love
• The Allingham Case-Book (1969: short stories)
  • "Black Plumes" (some re-prints)
  • "The Border-Line Case" (Mr. Campion)
  • "Evidence in Camera"
  • "Face Value"
  • "Is There a Doctor in the House?"
  • "Joke Over" (Mr. Campion)
  • "The Lieabout"
  • "Little Miss Know-All" (Mr. Campion)
  • "The Lying-in-State"
  • "The Mind's Eye Mystery"
  • "Mum Knows Best" (Mr. Campion)
  • "One Morning They'll Hang Him" (Mr. Campion)
  • "The Pioneers"
  • "The Pro and the Con" (Mr. Campion)
  • "The Psychologist"
  • "The Snapdragon and the C.I.D." (Mr. Campion)
  • "Tall Story" (Mr. Campion)
  • "They Never Get Caught"
  • "Three Is a Lucky Number"
  • "The Villa Marie Celeste" (Mr. Campion)
• The Darings of the Red Rose (Crippen & Landru, 1995)
• Three is a Lucky Number

As Maxwell March (a pseudonym)

• Other Man's Danger (1933: US title The Man of Dangerous Secrets)
• Rogues' Holiday (1935)
• The Shadow in the House (1936: US title The Devil and Her Son)