Despite the fact that her plots usually hinged on murder most foul, Peters was consistently able to create likeable protagonists who reflected their author's resolute belief that the best of human nature would ultimately win over evil.
Born in Shropshire in 1913, Peters spent her early childhood in the shadow of war. World War I ended in 1918, when Peters was six, and her teens were spent relatively uneventfully, attending elementary school and then the Coalbrookdale High School for Girls. Beginning in 1933, when she was twenty, Peters began work as a pharmacist's assistant, dispensing medications to customers in a shop in the Shropshire town of Dawley. Her spare time was spent writing, and her first novel, Hortensius, Friend of Nero, was published in 1936, when Peters was twenty-three. That same year saw her first short story, "The Face of Wax," published in Good Housekeeping; Peters would continue to sporadically publish short fiction throughout her career, some of which would later be anthologized in The Assize of the Dying and The Lily Hand and Other Stories.
By 1939 war again raged in Europe, and in 1940, at the age of twenty-seven, Peters followed her country's call and joined the war effort.
This is a free page. This page contains 181 words. This
biography contains 3,453 words (approx. 12 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Ellis Peters Access Pass.
