Margery Lawrence’s Followers (15)

Margery Lawrence

Born

in Wolverhampton, The United Kingdom

August 08, 1889

Died

November 13, 1969

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Margery Harriet Lawrence (alternate pen names: Jerome Latimer, Margery H. Lawrence) was an English romantic fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction and detective fiction author who specialized in ghost stories.

Her father was solicitor Richard J. Lawrence, her mother was called Grace, and she had at least two siblings Allan and Monica. Her father published her early poetry in Songs of Childhood, and Other Verses, in 1913.

Lawrence was also an illustrator, and producing drawings for The Hills of Ruel, and Other Stories (1921) by Fiona MacLeod.

Her earliest collections, the Round Table sequence, include Nights of the Round Table (1926) and The Terraces of Night (1932). Stefan Dziemianowicz describes these stories as "simple but solidly told tal Margery Harriet Lawrence (alternate pen names: Jerome Latimer, Margery H. Lawrence) was an English romantic fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction and detective fiction author who specialized in ghost stories.

Her father was solicitor Richard J. Lawrence, her mother was called Grace, and she had at least two siblings Allan and Monica. Her father published her early poetry in Songs of Childhood, and Other Verses, in 1913.

Lawrence was also an illustrator, and producing drawings for The Hills of Ruel, and Other Stories (1921) by Fiona MacLeod.

Her earliest collections, the Round Table sequence, include Nights of the Round Table (1926) and The Terraces of Night (1932). Stefan Dziemianowicz describes these stories as "simple but solidly told tales of horror and the supernatural that are mindful of the classic ghost story tradition but adorned with enough contemporary flourishes" to demonstrate that Lawrence was comfortable working variants on this tradition. These stories often appeared in British pulp magazines such as The Sovereign Magazine and Hutchinson's Mystery-Story prior to book publication.
During the 1920s she wrote general fiction, and her 1925 romance novel Red Heels was filmed by the Austrian film company Sascha Film as Das Spielzeug von Paris. A list of Lawrence's published novels to 1945 includes: Miss Brandt, Adventuress; Red Heels; Bohemian Glass; Drums of Youth; Silken Sarah; The Madonna of Seven Moons; Madam Holle; The Crooked Smile; Overture to Life; The Bridge of Wonder; and Step Light, Lady.

In 1941, she published another collection of short fiction, Strange Caravan (Robert Hale, 1941). A list of her short stories to 1945 also includes: Snapdragon; and The Floating Cafe.

Her best-known supernatural works include Number Seven, Queer Street (Robert Hale, 1945), a collection that purports to be the case histories of an occult detective, Dr Miles Pennoyer, as related by his assistant Jerome Latimer. Lawrence stated that this series was inspired by Algernon Blackwood's John Silence stories and Dion Fortune's Dr. Taverner series. Like May Sinclair before her, Lawrence became a confirmed spiritualist and believer in reincarnation in later years, and her book is heavy with didactic occultist dialogue. Another well-known supernatural volume is Master of Shadows (1959).

The Rent in the Veil is a fantasy involving a timeslip to Ancient Rome, and Bride of Darkness is a tale of witchcraft in the modern world.

In the foreword to Ferry Over Jordan (Psychic Book Club, 1944), Lawrence explains that during the latter part of 1941 she had written a further group of articles on Spiritualism for Psychic News. It was the resulting large number of inquiries that prompted editor Maurice Barbanell to suggest that Lawrence compile and expand upon those articles in book form, which she undertook at London between August 1942 and May 1943. The book was intended to be a primer on the much-discussed subject of Spiritualism. Apprehensive that her readers might be disappointed that her latest book was not a further novel or book of short stories, Lawrence took care to explain that she had not recently "taken to Spiritualism", but rather had been deeply interested in it for many years:
"My interest in it dates actually from the moment when I saw a near relation three nights after he died, when he gave me specific instructions about the finding of a box containing important papers. They were found precisely where he said--and from that moment I became deeply interested in what, throughout this book, I have called the "Other Side". Somewhere that man was obviously still alive! Somewhere he was thinking of us, anxious to help, caring what happened; in a word, he was still alive somewhere, and I was determined to find out where" [foreword, p. 5].
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery...] ...more

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Margery Lawrence’s books

Average rating: 3.85 · 1,229 ratings · 193 reviews · 55 distinct works • Similar authors

	Nights of the Round Table by Margery Lawrence, Richard Dalby (Editor) 3.94 avg rating — 47 ratings — published 1998 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Madonna of the Seven Moons 3.92 avg rating — 39 ratings — published 1967 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Terraces of Night: Being the Further Chronicles of the Club of the Round Table by Margery Lawrence, Richard Dalby (Introduction) 3.81 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 1932 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bride of Darkness 3.31 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 1967 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Number Seven Queer Street 3.56 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1945 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Casebook Of Miles Pennoyer 3.71 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2003 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Floating Café and Other Weird Tales 3.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1936 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Miss Brandt: Adventuress (Great Ladies of Crime #3): England's Most Daring Jewel Thief by Margery Lawrence, Nico Lorenzutti (Goodreads Author) 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Residence Afresh really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Skivvy 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Margery Lawrence…

Quotes by Margery Lawrence (?)

“There is a monstrous garden in the sky
Nightly they sow it fresh. Nightly it springs,
Luridly splendid, towards the moon on high.
Red-poppy flares, and fire-bombs rosy-bright
Shell-bursts like hellborn sunflowers, gold and white
Lilies, long-stemmed, that search the heavens' height...
They tend it well, these gardeners on wings!

How rich these blossoms, hideously fair
Sprawling above the shuddering citadel
As though ablaze with laughter! Lord, how long
Must we behold them flower, ruthless, strong
Soaring like weeds the stricken worlds among
Triumphant, gay, these dreadful blooms of hell?

O give us back the garden that we knew
Silent and cool, where silver daisies lie,
The lovely stars! O garden purple-blue
Where Mary trailed her skirts amidst the dew
Of ageless planets, hand-in-hand with You
And Sleep and Peace walked with Eternity.....

But here I sit, and watch the night roll by.
There is a monstrous garden in the sky!

(written during an air raid, London, midnight, October 1941)”
― Margery Lawrence

tags: poetry, second-world-war, war-poems, war-poetry, women-writers

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