Victor Canning

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Victor Canning (born June 16, 1911 in Plymouth , † February 21, 1986 in Cirencester ) was a British writer. He wrote novels and thrillers. His heyday were the 1950s to 1970s. Since his death in 1986 he has largely disappeared from the public eye. He lived a secluded life, left no memoirs and gave relatively few interviews. In addition to his own name, he also used the pseudonyms Alan Gould and Julian Forest .

Life

Victor Canning was in Plymouth in the county of Devon was born the son of the coach builder Fred Canning and his wife, May, née Goold. During the First World War, his father served as an ambulance driver in France and Flanders. During this time Victor Canning and his two sisters lived in Calstock, ten miles north of Plymouth, where his uncle Cecil Goold worked for the railroad. After the war the family returned to Plymouth. In the mid-1920s the family moved to Oxford , where the father had found work. Victor attends Oxford Central School. Here he was taught by his Latin teacher Dr. Henderson encouraged them to stay at school and go to college, but the family could not afford it. Instead, he started working in the Education Office at the age of 16.

Within three years, Victor Canning began selling short stories to magazines for boys. In 1934, Hodder and Stoughton accepted his first novel, Mr. Finchley Discovers his England . This novel became an instant bestseller. He quit his job and now worked full time as a writer. Over the next thirteen years he produced thirteen more novels under three different pseudonyms. Lord Rothermere hired him to write articles for the Daily Mail . Some of these travel articles were published in the 1936 book Everyman's England , illustrated by Leslie Stead.

In 1935 he married Phyllis McEwen, the daughter of a theater family. He met her when he was touring a vaudeville production in Weston-super-Mare . They had three daughters: Lindel (* 1939), Hilary (* 1940) and Virginia (* 1940).

Works (selection)

As Victor Canning

stories
  • Young Man on a Bicycle . 1958.
  • Delay on Turtle . 1962.
  • Comedies and Whimsies . 2007.
  • The Minerva Club, The Department of Patterns and Dr. Kang . 2009.
Detective novels
  • Panther's Moon . 1948.
    • German: Black Panther . Goldmann, Munich 1960.
  • The House of the Seven Flies . 1952.
    • German: The House of the Seven Flies . Goldmann, Munich 1969.
  • The hidden face . 1957.
    • German: The hidden face . Goldmann, Munich 1969.
  • The Manasco Road . 1957.
    • German: rivals on the reef . Goldmann, Munich 1970.
  • The Scorpio Letters . 1964.
    • German: Blackmail by Scorpio . Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1975.
  • Rex Carver Quartet
  1. The Whip Hand . 1965.
  2. Doubled in Diamonds . 1966.
  3. The Python Project . 1967.
  4. The Melting Man . 1968.
  • Queen's pawn . 1969.
    • German: Queen's chess . Bastei Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1973.
  • The Kingsford Mark . 1975.
    • German: The mark of sin . Goldmann, Munich 1978.
  • The Satan Sampler . 1979.
    • German: cross connections . Goldmann, Munich 1980.
  • Vanishing Point . 1982.
    • German: Secret for three . Goldmann, Munich 1984.
Novels
  • The Golden Salamander . 1949.
    • German: The golden salamander . Publishing house Toth, Hamburg 1951.
  • Venetian Bird . 1950.
    • German: In the shadow of San Marco . Gütersloh, Bertelsmann 1953.
  • The Dragon Tree . 1958.
    • German: The dragon tree . Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1976.
  • The Burning Eye . 1960.
    • German: The burning eye . Goldmann, Munich 1979.
  • A Delivery of Furies . 1961.
    • German: The robbery of the furies . Goldmann, Munich 1982.
  • Black flamingo . 1962.
    • German: Black Flamingo . Goldmann, Munich 1970.
  • The Limbo Line . 1963.
    • German: Behind the Limbo Line . Goldmann, Munich 1982.
  • Firecrest . 1971.
    • German: The lost Friday . Richarz Verlag, St. Augustin 1977.
  • The Rainbird Pattern . 1971.
    • German: On the trail . Lübbe-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1977.
  • Smiler trilogy
    • The Runaways . 1972.
      • German: The outliers . Zsolnay, Vienna 1972.
    • Flight of the gray goose . 1973.
      • German: summer wind and first love . Zsolnay, Vienna 1973.
    • The Painted Tent . 1974.
      • German: Fly with the wind to the bet . Zsolnay, Vienna 1974.
Non-fiction
  • Finchley series
  1. Mr. Finchley Discovers England . 1934.
  2. Mr. Finchley Goes to Paris . 1938.
  3. Mr. Finchley Takes the Road . 1940.
  • Everyman's England . 1936 (illustrated by Leslie Stead)
Plays
  • Beggar's Bush . 1940.

Posthumously

  • Table number seven . 1987 (completed by his wife and daughter).

As Alan Gould

  • Two Men Fought . 1936.
  • Mercy Lane . 1937.
  • Sanctuary from the Dragon . 1938.
  • Every Creature of God is Good . 1939.
  • The Viaduct . 1939.

As Julian Forest

  • The Wooden Angel . 1938.

Film adaptations

  • 1950: Ronald Neame (Director): Der goldene Salamander ( Golden Salamander , loosely based on The Golden Salamander ).
  • 1959: Richard Thorpe (Director): The House of the Seven Hawks (based on The House of the Seven Flies ).
  • 1964: Basil Dearden (Director): Let Agents Ask ( Masquerade , based on the novel Castle Minerva ).
  • 1966: Richard Thorpe (Director): Blackmail by Scorpio ( The Scorpio Letters , based on the novel The Scorpio Letters ).
  • 1966: Erich Neureuther (director): The very big thing.
  • 1969: Samuel Fuller (Director): Outsider ( Shark , based on the novel His Bones Are Coral ).
  • 1975: Alfred Hitchcock (Director): Familiengrab ( Family Plot , based on the novel The Rainbird Pattern ).

literature

  • Armin Arnold and Josef Schmidt (eds.): Reclams detective novel leader . Reclam, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-15-010279-0 , pp. 93-94.
  • Graham Lord: The crazy gamble that made Victor famous . In: Sunday Express of August 10, 19175.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the US domestic market, the title was changed to Hunter's moon .
  2. ↑ For the US domestic market, the title was changed to House of the seven hawks .
  3. ↑ For the US domestic market, the title was changed to Burden of Proof .
  4. ↑ For the US domestic market, the title was changed to The forbidden Road .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Canning, Victor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gould, Alan (pen name); Forest, Julian (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Plymouth
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1986
Place of death Cirencester