Richard Austin Freeman

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Richard Austin Freeman (born April 11, 1862 in Marylebone , London , England , † September 28, 1943 in Gravesend , Kent , England) was a British crime writer . He also wrote his novels and short stories under the acronym R. Austin Freeman, Austin Freeman and under the pseudonym Clifford Ashdown .

Live and act

Richard Austin Freeman was the youngest son of five children of tailor Richard Freeman and his wife Ann Maria Dunn. In 1880, R. Austin Freeman trained as a pharmacist and then began studying medicine at Middlesex Hospital in London, which he completed in 1886 with the acquisition of a Master of the Royal College of Surgeons . As a newly graduated doctor, he married Annie Elizabeth in 1887, with whom he had two sons. Then he went as a young doctor to the West African Gold Coast colony (now Ghana ) in Accra . There he accompanied an expedition to the Ashanti region and the tribal area of ​​the Bontuku as a doctor and navigator on behalf of the British government from 1888 to 1889 . About this expedition he wrote the book Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman which was published in 1898. During this expedition he was infected with Blackwater Fever. His health forbade further stay in Africa. Freeman returned to London in 1891 as an invalid. He settled with his family in Gravesend , County Kent, and practiced there as a doctor.

As a doctor, he found it difficult to make a living. Therefore, he increasingly devoted himself to writing. Under the pseudonym Clifford Ashdown and in collaboration with a friend, the prison doctor and lawyer John James Pitcairn (1860-1936), his first novel The Adventures of Romney Pringle appeared in 1902 . R. Freeman published his first uncooperative detective novel The Red Thumb Mark in 1907 . This novel was the successful start of the Dr. Thorndyke series and also the best-selling crime novel in this series. With his protagonist, the coroner Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, Freeman incorporated his science education, which he skilfully combined with contemporary criminalistic knowledge. His fictional character Thorndyke can always substantiate factual conclusions with solid evidence that he has obtained in lengthy and complicated laboratory work, about which he has informed his audience extensively. Pearson's Magazine published several Freeman's short stories, including The Case of Oscar Brodski (1912). A classic example of an inverted detective story , in which the reader is shown the figure of the perpetrator at the beginning. This short story also served as a template for the Detectives series , which was made in 1964.

During World War I he served as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Maidstone , Kent. During this time he continued to work as a writer. After the war, Freeman shifted his interest and became a member of the "Eugenics Society" ( eugenetics ), one of the numerous societies that demanded supremacy by the "racially pure Anglo-Saxons". With this in mind, Freeman wrote Social Decay and Regeneration in 1921 . Freeman criticized the industrial revolution as the cause of an alleged national decline and favored a return to a healthy, peasant social order. By 1942, R. Freeman wrote another thirty novels and short story collections.

R. Austin Freeman died on September 28, 1943 at his home in Gravesend.

bibliography

Richard Austin Freeman - The D'Arblay Mystery- The Gialli Mondadori 1931
  • Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman (1898)
  • Social decay and regeneration (1921)

Dr. Thorndyke novels

  • The Red Thumb Mark (1907)
  • The Eye of Osiris (1911)
  • The Mystery of 31, New Inn (1912)
  • A Silent Witness (1914)
  • Helen Vardon's Confession (1922)
  • The Cat's Eye (1923)
  • The Mystery of Angelina Frood (1924)
  • The Shadow of the Wolf (1925)
  • The D'Arblay Mystery (1926)
  • A Certain Dr Thorndyke (1927)
  • As a Thief in the Night (1928)
  • Mr Pottermack's Oversight (1930)
  • Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931)
  • When Rogues Fall Out (1932)
  • Dr Thorndyke Intervenes (1933)
  • For the Defense: Dr Thorndyke (1934)
  • The Penrose Mystery (1936)
  • Felo de se? (1937)
  • The Stoneware Monkey (1938)
  • Mr Polton Explains (1940)
  • The Jacob Street Mystery (1942)

Dr. Thorndyke short stories (selection)

  • The Case of Oscar Brodski
  • A case of premeditation
  • The Echo of a Mutiny
  • A Wastrel's Romance
  • The Stranger's Latchkey
  • The Anthropologist at Large
  • The Blue Sequin
  • The Mandarin's Pearl
  • The aluminum dagger
  • The Magic Casket
  • The Case of the White Footprints
  • The New Jersey sphinx
  • The Touchstone
  • A Fisher of Men
  • The stolen ingots
  • The Funeral Pyre
  • The Puzzle Lock
  • The Green Check Jacket
  • The Seal of Nebuchadnezzar
  • A mystery of the sand hills
  • The Apparition of Burling Court
  • The Mysterious Visitor
  • The Magic Casket
  • The Contents of a Mare's Nest
  • The stalking horse

Other novels and short stories

All novels and short stories under the pseudonym Clifford Ashdown were written in collaboration with Dr. John Pitcairn written.

  • The Adventures of Romney Pringle , by Clifford Ashdown (1902)
  • The Further Adventures of Romney Pringle , by Clifford Ashdown (1903)
  • From a Surgeon's Diary, by Clifford Ashdown (1904-1905)
  • The Golden Pool: A Story of a Forgotten Mine (1907)
  • The Unwilling Adventurer (1913)
  • The Uttermost Farthing (1913), published in the USA as A Savant's Vendetta
  • The Exploits of Danby Croker (1916)
  • The Great Portrait Mystery (1918)
  • The Surprising Experiences of Mr Shuttlebury Cobb (1927)
  • Flighty Phyllis (1928)
  • The Queen's Treasure , by Clifford Ashdown (1975)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/r-austin-freeman/ accessed on August 11, 2009 (English)
  2. ^ Pageant of Ghana by Freda S. Wolfson, Gerald S. Graham. Oxford University Press London, published 1958, p. 27
  3. ^ Pageant of Ghana by Freda S. Wolfson, Gerald S. Graham. Oxford University Press London, published 1958, page 189
personal data
SURNAME Freeman, Richard Austin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Marylebone
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1943
Place of death Gravesend