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 developed successful careers in the literary world. His "Ben" novels were reissued in 2015 and 2016.

Family

Born in

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, England, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, located mainly in the London Borough of Camden, with a small part in the London Borough of Barnet. It borders Highgate and Golders Green to the north, Belsiz ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, Farjeon was the grandson of the American actor Joseph Jefferson, after whom he was named.In Edwards's Introduction to the 2014 reissue of ''Mystery in White. A Christmas Crime Storey'' (London: British Library,

937 Year 937 ( CMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * A Hungarian army invades Burgundy, and burns the city of Tournus. Then they go southwards to Italy, pillaging the environs of ...

. His parents were Jefferson's daughter Maggie (1853–1935) and Benjamin Farjeon (1838–1903), a Victorian novelist, who was born in

Whitechapel Whitechapel () is an area in London, England, and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in east London and part of the East End of London, East End. It is the location of Tower Hamlets Town Hall and therefore the borough tow ...

to an impoverished immigrant family and 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 Eleanor () is a feminine given name, originally from an Old French adaptation of the Old Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It was the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages">Provençal dialect ...

became a children's author. His daughter Joan Jefferson Farjeon (1913–2006) was a theatre set designer.

Career: "creepy skill"

Farjeon worked for ten years for

Amalgamated Press The Amalgamated Press (AP) was a British newspaper and magazine publishing company founded by journalist and entrepreneur Alfred Harmsworth (1865–1922) in 1901, gathering his many publishing ventures together under one banner. At one point the ...

in London before going freelance, working nine hours a day at his writing desk. One of Farjeon's best known works was a 1925 play, '' Number 17'', which was adapted into several films, including ''

Number Seventeen ''Number Seventeen'' is a 1932 British Comedy film, comedy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring John Stuart (actor), John Stuart, Anne Grey and Leon M. Lion. The film, which is based on the 1925 burlesque stage play ''Number ...

'' (1932) directed by

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...

, and joined the UK Penguin Crime series as a novel in 1939. He also wrote the screenplay for

Michael Powell Michael Latham Powell (30 September 1905 – 19 February 1990) was an English filmmaker, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger. Through their production company Powell and Pressburger, The Archers, they together wrote, produced ...

's '' My Friend the King'' (1932) and provided the story for

Bernard Vorhaus Bernard Vorhaus (December 25, 1904 – November 23, 2000) was an American film director of Austrian descent, born in New York City. His father was born in Kraków, then part of Austria-Hungary. Vorhaus spent many decades living in the UK. Early ...

's '' The Ghost Camera'' (1933). Farjeon's crime novels were admired by

Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers ( ; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. Born in Oxford, Sayers was brought up in rural East Anglia and educated at Godolphin School in Salisbury and Somerv ...

, who called him "unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures". His obituarist in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' talked of "ingenious and entertaining plots and characterization," while ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', 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." A significant revival of interest in the

Golden age of detective fiction The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s. While the Golden Age proper is usually taken to refer to works from that period, this type of f ...

followed the 2014 success of

The British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

reissue of ''Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story.'' Two more reissues by Farjeon followed 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, French, Dutch (''Het mysterie in de sneeuw'' – The Mystery in the Snow), German, 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 heard of, 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." Since 2016, all eight Detective Ben novels have been reissued by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

from the

Collins Crime Club Collins Crime Club was an imprint of British book publishers William Collins, Sons and ran from 6 May 1930 to April 1994. Throughout its 64 years the club issued a total of 2,012in "The Hooded Gunman -- An Illustrated History of Collins Crime ...

archive as a series titled "Ben the tramp mystery".

Selected works

Crime fiction and other works

Detective Ben series

Under the pseudonym Anthony Swift

*''Murder at a Police Station'' (London, Hale, 1943) *''November the Ninth at Kersea'' (London, Hale, 1944) *''Interrupted Honeymoon'' (London, Hale, 1945)

The Detective X. Crook series

J.J. Farjeon's fictional character Detective X. Crook appeared from 1925 to 1929 in 57 issues of Flynn's Weekly Detective Fiction.

Short story collections

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

Plays

*'' Number 17'' (1925) *'' After Dark'' (1926) *''Enchantment'' (1927) *''Philomel'' (1932)

References

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.

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Farjeon, Joseph Jefferson 1883 births 1955 deaths 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English non-fiction writers English crime fiction writers Jewish English writers English male journalists English male novelists English people of American descent English male screenwriters

Joseph Joseph is a common male name, derived from the Hebrew (). "Joseph" is used, along with " Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic count ...

Writers from London Writers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction 20th-century English male writers 20th-century English screenwriters