P. D. James

P. D. James, born in 1920, British writer, best known for her acclaimed detective fiction, which features complex, imaginative plots, and successful character development. See also Detective Story.

Phyllis Dorothy James was born in Oxford, England, and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. Lacking the money for higher education, James went to work after secondary school, serving as an assistant stage manager at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge, England, and then as a Red Cross nurse during World War II (1939-1945). James married Ernest Conner Bantry White, a doctor, in 1941. Her husband served during World War II and returned from the war mentally incapacitated. From his return until his death in 1964, he was intermittently in mental institutions.

James’s novelistic understanding of medical matters, as well as her compassion for those suffering from physical and mental disabilities, is attributed in part to her experiences managing her husband’s health and in part to her subsequent career. In order to support their family, James worked full-time as principal administrative assistant for the North West Regional Hospital Board in London from 1949 to 1968 and then as principal administrative assistant for the British Department of Home Affairs in the Police Department and, later, the Criminal Department, both in London, from 1968 to 1979.

James began writing relatively late in life, publishing her first work, Cover Her Face, in 1962. This novel featured Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, her most popular and well-known character, who went on to solve a number of cases in the books A Mind to Murder (1963), Unnatural Causes (1967), Shroud for a Nightingale (1971), The Black Tower (1975), Death of an Expert Witness (1977), and Devices and Desires (1989). The popularity of James and her fictional detective were increased by the adaptation of several of her novels into popular television serials in 1985 and 1986. Her novel The Children of Men (1992), set in a frightening future where human beings can no longer reproduce, was turned into a successful motion picture in 2006.

James’s other famous creation is the private detective Cordelia Gray, who is featured in the novels An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982). James’s book The Children of Men (1992) marked a departure from the detective fiction genre to a futuristic novel set in a world devoid of children and was less well received than her earlier works. She returned to detective fiction with Original Sin (1994), another mystery for Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. Several more Dalgliesh books followed, including Death in Holy Orders (2001), Murder Room (2003), and The Lighthouse (2005). A memoir, Time to Be in Earnest, appeared in 2000.

In recognition of her work for the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Society of Authors, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), of which she was a governor, James was given the British honor of Life Peer of the United Kingdom, making her Baroness James of Holland Park. James earned a doctor of literature degree from the University of Buckingham in 1992 and another from the University of London in 1993.