Biography EssayThe coming-of-age of a mature crime fiction in England, to which P. D. James has contributed prominently, can be attributed to a variety of disparate causes: the rapid changes in a soci...
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The British author P(hyllis) D(orothy) James (born 1920) wrote in the tradition of the British crime storyteller, but her extensive explorations of relationships, motivations, and meanings of justice ...
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[This entry was updated by Ann Sanders Cargill (Columbia, S.C.) from the entry by Bernard Benstock (University of Miami) in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 180-199....
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P. D. James is the inheritor of some of the most distinguished literary mantles in popular fiction, those previously worn by detective-story writers who achieved near perfection in their craft. James'...
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In the following interview, James discusses her approach to crafting a mystery, her view on feminism, and how she wants to be remembered.
P. D. James is a unique person in a number of ways, not the le...
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In the following review, Mantel complains that the detective genre is too confining for James's talent.
February 1990: the literary editor of a British newspaper writes to The Spectator, protes...
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In the following review, Hughes praises the first part of James's The Children of Men as "fascinating stuff," but complains that the narrative of the second section "begins...
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In the following review, Wangerin discusses the two adventures in James's The Children of Men.
On New Year's Day, 2021, "the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a p...
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In the following review, Sallis argues that James fails in her intentions in The Children of Men.
There is but one liberty: to come to terms with death, Camus wrote, after which all things are possibl...
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In the following interview, Kellaway discusses with James setting, the enjoyment of detective fiction, and research.
In P D James's outstanding new novel, Original Sin, set in London, she write...
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In the following essay, Hubly analyzes the character of Adam Dalgliesh as a Byronic hero.
Various readers of P. D. James' novels have attempted to understand the character of her detective, Ada...
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In the following interview, James discusses how her novels differ from those of the traditional detective genre, and the inspiration behind her characters and plots.
"The extraordinary thing&#x...
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In the following essay, Symons discusses James's new book, A Taste for Death, and talks to the author about her life and writing in the detective genre.
The bodies were discovered at eight for...
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In the following essay, Richardson delineates the common symbolism and imagery between T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James's A Taste for Death and asserts that work is still meaningfu...
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In the following essay, Sizemore analyzes the role of London, with its mosaic of villages and people, in James's fiction, especially A Taste for Death and Innocent Blood.
A strong sub-genre of ...
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In the following excerpt, Wood asserts that James's Devices and Desires "is a thriller and a detective novel."
P. D. James's new novel[, Devices and Desires,] seems to retu...
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In the following review, Crist lauds James's vivid characters, evocation of place, and risk-taking in Devices and Desires.
Her newest mystery, Devices and Desires, is P. D. James at better than...
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Critical Essay by Maureen Howard
P. D. James is a writer of sophisticated English mystery stories, the sort of books that abound with an intelligence the reader feels complementary to his own. Those w...
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Critical Essay by Christopher Lehmann-haupt
"He ought to be writing thrillers," reflects the heroine of "Innocent Blood" about the novel's putative villain. "...
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Critical Essay by Julian Symons
P. D. James is a mystery writer who with [Innocent Blood] has abandoned mystery. She began as a writer of orthodox detective stories in the English tradition. Her first...
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Critical Essay by Newgate Callendar
To prove that the British mystery in the grand [Dorothy] Sayers line is not altogether dead, there is P. D. James's "Shroud For a Nightingale."...
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Critical Essay by Newgate Callendar
Trouble with really good writers is that they sometimes can get so involved with techniques and style that they tend to forget the raison d'être of th...
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Critical Essay by Thomas Lask
P. D. James's first omnibus volume ["Crime Times Three: 'Cover Her Face', 'A Mind to Murder' and 'Shroud For a Nightingal...
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Critical Essay by Michele Slung
There are a number of good things to be said about … P. D. James, but that she is a "new Agatha Christie" is not one of them…. I'm no...
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Critical Essay by Paul Bailey
There are two novels fighting for dominance within the covers of Innocent Blood. One of them is rooted—just—in the everyday world; the other capers about in...
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P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James White
