Edith Pargeter

Pargeter was born in the village of Horsehay (Shropshire, England), daughter of Edmund Valentine Pargeter (known as Ted) and his wife Edith nee Hordley. Her father was a clerk at the local Horsehay Company ironworks. She 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. She had Welsh ancestry, and many of her short stories and books (both fiction and non-fiction) are set in Wales and its borderlands, or have Welsh protagonists. After leaving school she worked as a temporary labour exchange clerk, then as an assistant at a chemist's shop in Dawley, during which time her first novel, Hortensius, Friend of Nero, was published in 1936. She became fluent in Czech and published award-winning translations of Czech poetry and prose into English. She translated books by Jan Neruda, Božena Němcová, and Karel Hynek Mácha, as well as books by 20th-century writers such as Bohumil Hrabal, Ivan Klíma, Ladislav Vančura, and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, the poet Jaroslav Seifert. She was an active Labour Party supporter until, with her brother Ellis Pargeter (a local councillor in Dawley), she left the party in 1949 because they believed that it had deserted socialist principles. ==Writing career==

She devoted the rest of her life to writing, both nonfiction and well-researched fiction. She never attended university but became a self-taught scholar in areas that interested her, especially Shropshire and Wales. Birmingham University gave her an honorary master's degree. She never married, but did fall in love with a Czech man. She remained friends with him after he married another woman. She was pleased that she could support herself with her writing from the time after the Second World War until her death. Her Cadfael novels show great appreciation for the ideals of medieval Catholic Christianity, but also a recognition of its weaknesses, such as quarrels over the finer points of theology (''The Heretic's Apprentice), and the desire of the church to own more and more land and wealth (Monk's Hood, Saint Peter's Fair, The Rose Rent''). ==Later life==

In 1992 her mobility began to decline after a fall during a service being televised for Songs of Praise at Shrewsbury Abbey. She had a further fall in 1994 at home that led to the amputation of a leg at Princess Royal Hospital, Telford. ==Recognition==

The Mystery Writers of America gave Pargeter their Edgar Award in 1963 for Death and the Joyful Woman. In 1980, the British Crime Writers' Association awarded her the Silver Dagger for ''Monk's Hood''. In 1993 she won the Cartier Diamond Dagger, an annual award given by the CWA to authors who have made an outstanding lifetime contribution to the field of crime and mystery writing. Pargeter was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to Literature" in the 1994 New Year Honours. To commemorate Pargeter's life and work, in 1999 the CWA established their Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award (later called the Ellis Peters Historical Award) for the best historical crime novel of the year. Pargeter's Cadfael Chronicles are often credited for popularizing what would later become known as the historical mystery. ==Adaptations==

Her novella The Assize of the Dying was adapted as the 1958 film ''The Spaniard's Curse''. Directed by Ralph Kemplen, it starred Tony Wright, Lee Patterson, Michael Hordern, Susan Beaumont and Henry Oscar. Death and the Joyful Woman was adapted for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1963. Directed by John Brahm, it starred Gilbert Roland, Laraine Day and Don Galloway. Death and the Joyful Woman was again adapted, this time for Czech television, as Smrt a blazená paní (Death and the Blessed Lady), directed by Pavel Háša. Thirteen of her Cadfael novels were adapted for television as Cadfael between 1994 and 1998. Episodes were adapted by Russell Lewis, and starred Derek Jacobi, Julian Firth. Michael Culver and Terence Hardiman. ==Bibliography==