Patricia Wentworth was born Dora Amy Elles in India in 1877, the only daughter of Lieutenant-General Sir Edmond and Lady Elles. Her father served most of his career in the British Army in India, where she spent the major part of her early life.
In 1901 she married George Dillon, an Irishman serving in the Indian Army. He was a widower with three sons by his first wife. Patricia came to cherish her three young stepsons as her own, and went on to bear her only child in 1904. In 1906, George was suddenly taken ill and was sent home with the entire family, but died at sea on the journey home. So she returned to England as a widow, aged twenty-nine, with a two-year-old daughter and three stepsons and started to write novels under the pen name of Patricia Wentworth. Her first novel, A Marriage under the Terror, appeared in 1910. It was an instant success and won for her a prize for best first novel.
After marrying her second husband, George Turnbull, an officer in the same regiment in the Indian Army as her first, Patricia Wentworth returned to writing novels - The Fire Within was published in 1923. She turned to writing detective fiction, dictating her books to her husband. The heroine of her last thirty-two books was Miss Silver, retired children's governess-turned-professional sleuth. This series of crime novels proved to be an instant success, which has endured until the present day.
Patricia Wentworth's life spanned two world wars. She wrote at least eighty-two books many of which are still in print. This indomitable woman led a full life, albeit with more than a fair share of personal tragedy, but which, at the final count, was successful, fulfilled and happy.
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