1. Edith Pargeter is probably best known for her murder mysteries, both historical and modern, and especially for her medieval detective series The Cadfael Chronicles.
20 Facts About Edith Pargeter
1. 2.
Edith Pargeter's father was a clerk at the local Horsehay Company ironworks.
3.
Edith Pargeter later moved with her parents to Dawley where she was educated at Dawley Church of England School and the old Coalbrookdale High School for Girls.
4.
Edith Pargeter had Welsh ancestry, and many of her short stories and books are set in Wales and its borderlands, or have Welsh protagonists.
5.
Edith Pargeter worked in an administrative role as a teleprinter operator at Devonport, and then at the Western Approaches Headquarters at Derby House, Liverpool.
6.
Edith Pargeter reached the rank of petty officer by 1 January 1944 when she was awarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours.
7.
In 1947 Pargeter visited Czechoslovakia in a Workers' Educational Association party and became fascinated by the Czech language and culture.
8.
Edith Pargeter wrote two books about then-Czechoslovakia: "The Fair Young Phoenix" and "The Coast of Bohemia".
9.
Edith Pargeter became fluent in Czech and published award-winning translations of Czech poetry and prose into English.
10.
Edith Pargeter was an active Labour Party supporter until, with her brother Ellis Pargeter, she left the party in 1949 because they believed that it had deserted socialist principles.
11.
Edith Pargeter devoted the rest of her life to writing, both nonfiction and well-researched fiction.
12.
Edith Pargeter never attended university but became a self-taught scholar in areas that interested her, especially Shropshire and Wales.
13.
Edith Pargeter never married, but did fall in love with a Czech man.
14.
Edith Pargeter remained friends with him after he married another woman.
15.
Edith Pargeter was pleased that she could support herself with her writing from the time after the Second World War until her death.
16.
Edith Pargeter wrote under a number of pseudonyms; it was under the name Ellis Peters that she wrote her later crime stories, especially the highly popular series of Brother Cadfael medieval mysteries, featuring a Benedictine monk at the Abbey in Shrewsbury.
17.
Edith Pargeter had a further fall in 1994 at home that led to the amputation of a leg at Princess Royal Hospital, Telford.
18.
Edith Pargeter died at her last home in Glendinning Way, Madeley, Shropshire, in October 1995 at the age of 82, having recently returned home from hospital following a stroke.
19.
Edith Pargeter is remembered in her home town with a residential road named after her.
20.
Edith Pargeter was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire "for services to Literature" in the 1994 New Year Honours.