Joseph Jefferson Farjeon

Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (4 June 1883 – 6 June 1955) was an English crime and mystery novelist, playwright and screenwriter. His father, brother and sister also made names for themselves in literature. His "Ben" novels were reissued in 2015 and 2016.

Joseph Jefferson Farjeon
Born4 June 1883
Hampstead, London, England
Died6 June 1955 (aged 72)
Hove, Sussex, England
OccupationWriter, playwright

Family

Born in Hampstead, London,[1] Farjeon was the grandson of the American actor Joseph Jefferson, after whom he was named.[2] His parents were Jefferson's daughter Maggie (1853–1935) and Benjamin Farjeon (1838–1903), a prolific Victorian novelist who was born in Whitechapel to an impoverished immigrant family, who travelled widely before returning to England in 1868. Joseph Jefferson Farjeon's brothers were Herbert, a dramatist and scholar, and Harry, who became a composer. His sister Eleanor became a renowned children's author.[3] His daughter Joan Jefferson Farjeon (1913–2006) was a scene designer.[4]

Career: "creepy skill"

Farjeon worked for ten years for Amalgamated Press in London before going freelance, sitting nine hours a day at his writing desk.[5] One of Farjeon's best known works was a 1925 play, Number 17, which was made into a number of films, including Number Seventeen (1932) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and joined the UK Penguin Crime series as a novel in 1939. He also wrote the screenplay for Michael Powell's My Friend the King (1932) and provided the story for Bernard Vorhaus's The Ghost Camera (1933).[6]

Farjeon's crime novels were admired by Dorothy L. Sayers, who called him "unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures."[2] His obituarist in The Times talked of "ingenious and entertaining plots and characterization," while The New York Times, reviewing an early novel, Master Criminal (1924), states that "Mr. Farjeon displays a great deal of knowledge about story-telling... and multiplies the interest of his plot through a terse, telling style and a rigid compression." The Saturday Review of Literature called Death in the Inkwell (1942) an "amusing, satirical, and frequently hair-raising yarn of an author who got dangerously mixed up with his imaginary characters."[7]

A significant revival of interest in the Golden age of detective fiction had followed the 2014 success of The British Library reissue of Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story.[2] There followed two further reissues in 2015: Thirteen Guests and The Z Murders. Mystery in White is also one of at least three of his novels to have appeared in Italian,[8] French, Dutch (Het mysterie in de sneeuw – The Mystery in the Snow), German,[9] Spanish, Polish and Russian.

Seven Dead has been reissued by The British Library (September 2017). The novel sees the return of Detective-Inspector Kendall, first seen, in the words of its central character "...in the case of the Thirteen Guests. What I liked about him was that he didn't play the violin, or have a wooden leg or anything of that sort. He just got on with it."

The figure of Ben in No. 17 appeared again in seven other novels which have all been reissued under the revived Collins Crime Club imprint since 2016.

Selected works

Crime fiction and other works
  • The Master Criminal (London, Brentano's, 1924)
  • The Confusing Friendship (London, Brentano's, 1924)
  • Little Things That Happen (London, Methuen, 1925)
  • Uninvited Guests (London, Brentano's, 1925)
  • At the Green Dragon (London, Harrap, 1926) [US title: The Green Dragon]
  • The Crook's Shadow (London, Harrap, 1927)
  • More Little Happenings (London, Methuen, 1928)
  • The House of Disappearance (New York, A. L. Burt, 1928)
  • Underground (New York, A. L. Burt, 1928) [alternative title: Mystery Underground, 1932]
  • Shadows by the Sea (London, Harrap, 1928)
  • The Appointed Date (London, 1929)
  • The 5:18 Mystery (1929)
  • The Person Called Z (1929)
  • Following Footsteps (1930)
  • The Mystery on the Moor (London, Collins, 1930)
  • The Z Murders (London, Collins, 1932)
  • Trunk Call (London, Collins, 1932) [US title: The Trunk Call Mystery]
  • Sometimes Life's Funny (London, Collins, 1933)
  • The Mystery of the Creek (London, Collins, 1933) [US title: The House on the Marsh]
  • Dead Man's Heath (London, Collins, 1933) [US title: The Mystery of Dead Man's Heath]
  • Old Man Mystery (London, Collins, 1933)
  • Fancy Dress Ball (London, Collins, 1934) [US title: Death in Fancy Dress]
  • The Windmill Mystery (London, Collins, 1934)
  • Sinister Inn (London, Collins, 1934)
  • The Golden Singer (1935)
  • His Lady Secretary (1935)
  • Mountain Mystery (1935)
  • Holiday Express (London, Collins, 1935)
  • The Adventure of Edward (1936)
  • Thirteen Guests (London, Collins, 1936)
  • Dangerous Beauty (London, Collins, 1936)
  • Yellow Devil (1937)
  • Holiday at Half Mast (London, Collins, 1937)
  • Mystery in White (1937)
  • The Compleat Smuggler (1938)
  • Dark Lady (1938)
  • End of An Author (1938) [US title: Death in the Inkwell, 1942]
  • Seven Dead (1939)
  • Exit John Horton (1939) [US title: Friday the 13th, 1942]
  • Facing Death: Tales Told on a Sinking Raft (1940)
  • Aunt Sunday Sees It Through (1940) [US title: Aunt Sunday Takes Command]
  • Room Number 6 (1941)
  • The Third Victim (1941)
  • The Judge Sums Up (1942)
  • The House of Shadows (1943)
  • Greenmask (1944)
  • Black Castle (1944)
  • Rona Runs Away (1945)
  • The Oval Table (1946)
  • Peril in the Pyrenees (1946)
  • The Works of Smith Minor (1947)
  • Back To Victoria (1947)
  • Benelogues (1948)
  • The Llewellyn Jewel Mystery (1948)
  • Death of a World (1948)
  • The Adventure at Eighty (1948)
  • Prelude To Crime (1948)
  • The Lone House Mystery (1949)
  • The Impossible Guest (1949)
  • The Shadow of Thirteen (1949)
  • The Disappearances of Uncle David (1949)
  • Change With Me (1950)
  • Mother Goes Gay (1950)
  • Cause Unknown (1950)
  • Mystery on Wheels (1951)
  • The House Over the Tunnel (1951)
  • Adventure For Nine (1951)
  • The Double Crime (1953)
  • The Mystery of the Map (1953)
  • Money Walks (1953)
  • Castle of Fear (1954)
  • Bob Hits the Headlines (1954)
  • The Caravan Adventure (1955)

Detective Ben series
  • No. 17 (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1926)
  • The House Opposite (London, Collins, 1931)
  • Murderer's Trail (London, Collins, 1931) [US title: Phantom Fingers]
  • Ben Sees It Through (London, Collins, 1932)
  • Little God Ben (London, Collins, 1935)
  • Detective Ben (London, Collins, 1936)
  • Ben on the Job (1952)
  • Number Nineteen (1952)

Under the pseudonym Anthony Swift
  • Murder at a Police Station (1943)
  • November the Ninth at Kersea (1944)
  • Interrupted Honeymoon (1945)

The Detective X. Crook series

J.J. Farjeon's fictional character Detective X. Crook appeared from 1925–1929 in 57 issues of Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction.[10]

  • Red Eye (June 20, 1925)
  • The Bilton Safe (June 27, 1925)
  • The Way to Death (July 4, 1925)
  • Thomas Doubts No Longer (July 11, 1925)
  • Fisherman’s Luck (July 18, 1925)
  • Where the Treasure Is (August 1, 1925)
  • The Hidden Death (August 8, 1925)
  • Nine Hours to Live (August 22, 1925)
  • Elsie Cuts Both Ways (August 29, 1925)
  • Crook’s Code (December 19, 1925)
  • Percy the Pickpocket (December 26, 1925)
  • A Race for Life (January 2, 1926)
  • Seeing’s Believing (January 9, 1926)
  • The Deserted Inn (January 23, 1926)
  • Death’s Grim Symbol (February 6, 1926)
  • Crook Goes Back to Prison (April 10, 1926)
  • Who Killed James Fyne (April 17, 1926)
  • Caleb Comes Back (April 24, 1926)
  • The Vanished Gift (May 1, 1926)
  • The Death That Beckoned (May 15, 1926)
  • Footprints in the Snow (July 17, 1926)
  • The Shadow (July 24, 1926)
  • Cats Are Evil (August 14, 1926)
  • The Silent House (August 28, 1926)
  • The Kleptomaniac (September 18, 1926)
  • The Knife (October 23, 1926)
  • The Hotel Hold-up (November 20, 1926)
  • The Silent Client (November 27, 1926)
  • Darkness (December 11, 1926)
  • It Pays To Be Honest (December 18, 1926)
  • Kidnaped (December 25, 1926)
  • Whose Hand? (January 8, 1927)
  • The Datchett Diamond (January 29, 1927)
  • Vanishing Gems (February 5, 1927)
  • The Murder Club (February 26, 1927)
  • LQ585 (March 5, 1927)
  • The Stolen Hand Bag (March 19, 1927)
  • Prescription 93b (March 26, 1927)
  • The Thing in the Room (May 7, 1927)
  • In the Diamond Line (May 28, 1927)
  • The New Baronet (June 4, 1927)
  • The Fourth Attempt (July 9, 1927)
  • The Absconding Treasurer (July 23, 1927)
  • The Man Who Forgot (September 3, 1927)
  • No Motive Apparent (September 24, 1927)
  • The Cleverness of Crockett (October 29, 1927)
  • August 13th (September 8, 1928)
  • The Photograph (September 15, 1928)
  • Between Calais and Dover (September 22, 1928)
  • The Bloodstained Handkerchief (October 6, 1928)
  • Wanted (October 13, 1928)
  • The Third Act (December 29, 1928)
  • The Secret of the Snow (February 9, 1929)
  • Open Warfare (February 16, 1929)
  • The Photographic Touch (March 9, 1929)
  • The "Times" Advertisement (March 30, 1929)
  • The Golden Idol (April 13, 1929)

Short story collections
  • Down the Green Stairs and Other Stories (1943) (Down the Green Stairs, February the Seventh, It Happened in a Fog, Tomatoes in Egg-Cups)
  • Waiting for the Police and Other Short Stories (1943) (The Other Side of the Bars, Waiting for the Police, Where's Mr. Jones?)
  • The Twist and Other Stories (1944) (The Twist, The Room, In Reverse)
  • The Haunted Lake and Other Stories (1945) (The Haunted Lake, Midnight Adventure, Supper is Served, Exchange is No Robbery)
  • The Invisible Companion and Other Stories (1946) (February the Seventh, In Reverse, The Invisible Companion, The Room That Got Lost, Supper Is Served)
  • Midnight Adventure and Other Stories (1946) (Midnight Adventure, The Vase and the Candlestick, Waiting for the Police, It Happened in the Fog, Exchange is No Robbery)

Other short stories

Plays

References
  1. http://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/world-records/england-and-wales-births-1837-2006?firstname=joseph&lastname=farjeon
  2. In Edwards's Introduction to the 2014 reissue of Mystery in White. A Christmas Crime Storey (London: British Library, [1937]).
  3. Lewis Melville, "Farjeon, Benjamin Leopold (1838–1903)", rev. William Baker. ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004 Retrieved 21 November 2014, pay-walled.
  4. Obituary in The Independent, 14 August 2006. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
  5. Publisher's biographical note in the Penguin Crime edition of the novelized No. 17.
  6. IMDb. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
  7. gadetection site. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
  8. As Sotto la neve Polillo Editore site Retrieved 21 November 2014.
  9. Drei Raben Verlag Retrieved 21 November 2014.
  10. "Mystery File". 4 December 2012. Retrieved 1 April 2019.

Other sources
  • Bordman, Gerald Martin. American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1914–1930. Oxford University Press, 1995.
  • Krueger, Christine L. Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th Century. Infobase Publishing, 2003.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.