15 Facts About Josephine Tey

Elizabeth MacKintosh, known by the pen name Josephine Tey, was a Scottish author.

Josephine Tey attended Inverness Royal Academy and then, in 1914, Anstey Physical Training College in Erdington, a suburb of Birmingham.

Josephine Tey taught physical training at various schools in England and Scotland and during her vacations worked at a convalescent home in Inverness as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse.

Josephine Tey used her school experience in Miss Pym Disposes when describing the subjects taught at the school, and the types of bruises and other injuries sustained by the pupils.

When she graduated, Josephine Tey worked in a physiotherapy clinic in Leeds, then taught in schools, first in Nottinghamshire, then in Oban, where she was injured when a boom in the gymnasium fell on her face.

Josephine Tey repurposed this incident as a method of murder in Miss Pym Disposes.

Josephine Tey's first published work was in The Westminster Gazette in 1925, under the name Gordon Daviot.

Josephine Tey continued publishing verse and short stories in The Westminster Review, The Glasgow Herald and the Literary Review.

Josephine Tey wrote about a dozen one-act plays and another dozen full-length plays, many with biblical or historical themes, under the name of Gordon Daviot but none of these received notable success.

MacKintosh's best-known books were written under the name of Josephine Tey, which was the name of her Suffolk great-great grandmother.

The Daughter of Time was the last of Josephine Tey's books published during her lifetime.

Josephine Tey was intensely private, shunning all publicity throughout her life.

Josephine Tey's ultimate work, The Privateer, was a romantic novel based on the life of the privateer Henry Morgan.

Josephine Tey died of liver cancer at her sister Mary's home in London on 13 February 1952.

Proceeds from Josephine Tey's estate, including royalties from her books, were assigned to the National Trust.