Elizabeth Ferrars’s Followers (27)

Elizabeth Ferrars

Born

in Rangoon (then Burma, part of the British Empire), Myanmar

September 06, 1907

Died

March 30, 1995

Genre

Mystery & Thrillers, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories

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Aka E.X. Ferrars.

Born Morna Doris McTaggart in Rangoon, Burma of a Scottish father and an Irish-German mother, she grew up in England where she moved at age six. She attended Bedales school and then took a diploma in journalism at London University.

Her first two novels, 'Turn Single' (1932) and 'Broken Music' (1934), came out under her own name, Morna McTaggart. In the early 1930s she married her first husband but she left him, moved to Belsize Park in London and lived with Dr Robert Brown, a lecturer in botany at Bedford College in 1942. She eventually divorced her first husband in October 1945 and married Dr, later Professor, Brown.

It was in 1940 that her first crime novel 'Give a Corpse a Bad Name' was published under the pseudonymn that Aka E.X. Ferrars.

Born Morna Doris McTaggart in Rangoon, Burma of a Scottish father and an Irish-German mother, she grew up in England where she moved at age six. She attended Bedales school and then took a diploma in journalism at London University.

Her first two novels, 'Turn Single' (1932) and 'Broken Music' (1934), came out under her own name, Morna McTaggart. In the early 1930s she married her first husband but she left him, moved to Belsize Park in London and lived with Dr Robert Brown, a lecturer in botany at Bedford College in 1942. She eventually divorced her first husband in October 1945 and married Dr, later Professor, Brown.

It was in 1940 that her first crime novel 'Give a Corpse a Bad Name' was published under the pseudonymn that she had adopted, Elizabeth (sometimes Elizabeth X. - particularly in the USA) Ferrars, the Ferrars her mother's maiden name. This novel featured her young detective Toby Dyke, who was to feature in four other of her novels.

When her husband was offered a post at Cornell University in the USA, the couple moved there but remained only a year before returning to Britain. They travelled with her husband's work, on one occasion visiting Adelaide when he was a visiting professor at the University of South Australia, and later moved to Edinburgh where her husband was appointed Regius Professor of Botany and they lived in the city until 1977 when, on her husband's retirement, they moved to Blewsbury in Oxfordshire where they lived until her sudden death in 1995.

She continued to write a crime novel almost every year and in 1953 she was a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association of which she later became chairperson in 1977.

As well as her short series of works featuring Toby Dyke, she wrote a series featuring retired botanist Andrew Basnett and another series featuring a semi-estranged married couple, Virginia and Felix Freer. All in all she wrote over seventy novels, her final one 'A Thief in the Night' being published posthumously.

Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor described her as having "a sound enough grasp of motives and human relations and a due regard for probability and technique, but whose people and plot are so standard".

Gerry Wolstenholme
November 2010 ...more

Combine Editions
Elizabeth Ferrars’s books

Average rating: 3.63 · 2,509 ratings · 282 reviews · 91 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Crime and the Crystal (Andrew Basnett Book 3) 3.84 avg rating — 269 ratings — published 1985 — 18 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
	A Hobby of Murder by Elizabeth Ferrars, E.X. Ferrars (AKA) 3.79 avg rating — 159 ratings — published 1994 — 15 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
	I Met Murder 3.78 avg rating — 65 ratings — published 1985 — 17 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
	Hanged Man's House 3.60 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 1974 — 16 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
	Murder Among Friends 3.67 avg rating — 46 ratings — published 1946 — 14 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 Cup and the Lip 3.42 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 1975 — 17 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
	Skeleton in Search of a Cupboard 3.38 avg rating — 47 ratings — 13 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
	Foot in the Grave 3.69 avg rating — 39 ratings — published 1972 — 13 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
	Remove the Bodies 3.26 avg rating — 43 ratings — published 1940 — 14 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
	Seeing is Believing 3.31 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 1994 — 13 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 Elizabeth Ferrars…

Series by Elizabeth Ferrars

Superintendent Ditteridge (5 books)
by

Elizabeth Ferrars

3.56 avg rating — 175 ratings

Toby Dyke (5 books)
by

Elizabeth Ferrars

3.45 avg rating — 165 ratings

Quotes by Elizabeth Ferrars (?)

“I found out myself long ago that there's no one whom one dislikes so much as the person in whom one's confided too much.”
― Elizabeth Ferrars, The March Hare Murders

tags: confidences

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“The thought of travel, considered several months ahead, might seem immensely attractive, but when the time of departure came near Andrew nearly always found himself wishing desperately that he had not been such a fool as to commit himself to it.”
― Elizabeth Ferrars, The Crime and the Crystal

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“Friendship can only survive on a sound basis of ignorance.”
― Elizabeth Ferrars, The March Hare Murders

tags: friendship

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See all Elizabeth Ferrars's quotes »

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