Celia Margaret Fremlin (20 June 1914 – 16 June 2009) was an English writer of mystery fiction.
Life Celia was born in Kingsbury, Middlesex, England. She was the daughter of Heaver Fremlin and Margaret Addiscott. Her older brother, John H. Fremlin, later became a nuclear physicist.
Fremlin studied Classics at Somerville College, University of Oxford. From 1942 to 2000 she lived in Hampstead, London. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, with whom she had three children; he died in 1968. In 1985, Fremlin married Leslie Minchin, who died in 1999. Her many crime novels and stories helped modernize the sensation novel tradition by introducing criminal and (rarely) supernatural elements into domestic settings. Her 1958 novel The Hours Before Dawn won the Edgar Award in 1960.
Fremlin was involved in Mass-Observation during the war, and published War Factory with Tom Harrisson in 1943.
With Jeffrey Barnard, she was co-presenter of a BBC2 documentary, Night and Day, describing diurnal and nocturnal London, broadcast on 23 January 1987.
Fremlin was an advocate of assisted suicide and euthanasia. In a newspaper interview she admitted to assisting four people to die."The good companion: Celia Fremlin is fit, happy and still busy writing crime novels in her eighties. But when it's time to go, she's determined she will go. She has helped four people in extremis to die. And she doesn't see why, some day, she shouldn't do the same for herself - legally." Guardian, 21 June 1997 In 1983 civil proceedings were brought against her as one of the five members of the EXIT Executive committee which had published A Guide to Self Deliverance, but the court refused to declare the booklet unlawful."Striking Link between Suicides and Booklet", London Times, 19 April 1983
She was also involved with the Progressive League.
Writing
Lucy Lethbridge has written of Fremlin's work that "almost all her novels centring round the home as the harbour of a particularly horrible, intimate, terror".
Some of her novels have been reissued since her death. Notably, her 1959 book Uncle Paul was republished by Faber & Faber in the UK in June 2023.
Death She died on 16 June 2009 in Bournemouth.
Bibliography
Manners and Society 1940 – The Seven Chars of Chelsea 1943 – War Factory (with Tom Harrisson)
Novels 1958 – The Hours Before Dawn; (Edgar Award for Best Novel, 1960) 1959 – Uncle Paul (Republished in the UK by Faber & Faber, June 2023) 1961 – Seven Lean Years (US: Wait for the Wedding) 1963 – The Trouble Makers 1964 – The Jealous One 1967 – Prisoner's Base 1969 – Possession 1972 – Appointment with Yesterday 1975 – The Long Shadow 1977 – The Spider-Orchid 1980 – With No Crying 1982 – The Parasite Person 1990 – Listening in the Dusk 1991 – Dangerous Thoughts 1993 – The Echoing Stones 1994 – King of the World
Collections 1970 – Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark 1974 – By Horror Haunted 1984 – A Lovely Day to Die 2019 - Ghostly Stories
Poetry 1996 – Duet in Verse (with Leslie Minchin)
References