Josephine Tey was one of many pseudonyms used by Elizabeth Mackintosh (July 25, 1896–February 13, 1952) a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels.

Life and work

She was born in Inverness, and attended a physical training college in Birmingham, before becoming a teacher. However, her literary career began only when she was forced to give up regular work in order to care for her invalid father.

In five of the mystery novels she wrote under the name of Josephine Tey, the hero is Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant (he also appears in a sixth, The Franchise Affair, but only as a minor character). The most famous of these is The Daughter of Time, in which Grant, laid up in the hospital, has friends research reference books and contemporary documents so he can puzzle out the mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Inspector Grant concludes that King Richard was quite innocent, and that the princes were killed by Henry VII.

The Daughter of Time was the last of her books published during her lifetime. The Franchise Affair also has a historical context: although set in the 1940s, it is based on the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning.

A further crime novel, The Singing Sands, was found in her papers and published posthumously. After her death, proceeds from her estate, including royalties from her books, were assigned to the National Trust.

As Gordon Daviot she wrote about a dozen one-act plays and another dozen full-length plays, but only four of them were produced during her lifetime. Richard of Bordeaux was particularly successful, running for fourteen months and starring John Gielgud.

Tey appears as a main character in An Expert In Murder (Faber 2008) by Nicola Upson, a detective story woven around the original production of Richard of Bordeaux. Upson intends a series of similar mysteries.

Mystery novels by Tey

• The Man in the Queue [or Killer in the Crowd (1929)
• A Shilling for Candles (1936) (the basis of Hitchcock's 1937 movie Young and Innocent)
• Miss Pym Disposes (1946)
• The Franchise Affair (1948) (filmed in 1950 starring Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray)
• Brat Farrar [or Come and Kill Me (1949)
• To Love and Be Wise (1950)
• The Daughter of Time (1951)
• The Singing Sands (1952)

External links

• Richard III Society Biography
• Internet Movie Database retrieved 30/8/06

See also

• Upson, Nicola (2008). An Expert in Murder. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0571237708.  -- a mystery novel with Josephine Tey as a main character.