Authors

Patricia Wentworth was born Dora Amy Elles in India in 1877, the only daughter of Lieutenant-General Sir Edmond and Lady Elles. Her father served most of his career in the British Army in India, where she spent the major part of her early life. In 1901 she married George Dillon, an Irishman serving in the Indian Army. In 1906, George died after a sudden illness. She returned to England as a widow, and started to write novels under the pen name of Patricia Wentworth. Her first novel, A Marriage under the Terror, appeared in 1910. It was an instant success and won for her a prize for best first novel. She remarried George Turnbull, also an officer in the Indian Army, and continued to write, dictating her books to her husband. The heroine of her last thirty-two books was Miss Silver, retired children’s governess-turned-professional sleuth. This series of crime novels proved to be an instant success, which has endured until the present day.