伊丽莎白·乔治

Elizabeth George

生卒: 1949 –
国籍: 美国
外文名: Elizabeth George

照片：Librairie Mollat，CC BY 3.0，来自维基共享资源「2019-05-11 - Elizabeth George.jpg」（经缩小）。

生平与创作

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Susan Elizabeth George (born February 26, 1949) is an American writer of mystery novels.

She is the author of a series of novels featuring Inspector Thomas Lynley of London's Metropolitan Police. The 22nd book in the series was published in September 2025. The first 11 were adapted for television by the BBC as earlier episodes of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2001). A later separate four-part series entitled Lynley, shown on BritBox and BBC One, began filming in 2024, starring Leo Suter and Sofia Barclay.

Early life

Elizabeth George was born in Warren, Ohio, the second child of Anne (née Rivelle) and Robert Edwin George. She has an older brother, author Robert Rivelle George. Her mother was a nurse and her father a manager for a conveyor company. The family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she was 18 months old. She recounts that her mother gave her an old Remington typewriter and she began writing at the age of 7. She said: "I have always felt compelled to write. When I began reading the Little Golden Books as a 7-year-old, I knew that I wanted to write one, too. I wrote tiny stories like that in the beginning." She has named Anne of Green Gables as one of the literary influences of her childhood.

She received an Associate of Arts in 1969 from Foothill Community College in Los Altos Hills, California, a Bachelor of Arts in 1970 from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master of Science in counseling and psychology in 1979 from the California State University, Fullerton, and later attended the University of California, Berkeley.

She received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Cal State University Fullerton in 2004 and was awarded an honorary Masters in Fine Arts from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts in 2010.

Career

1975-1987 She taught English in high schools in Orange County, California (Mater Dei High School (Santa Ana, California), El Toro High School).

George wrote three crime novels before being accepted for publication.

1988-1990 She taught creative writing at colleges in Orange County, California (Coastline Community College, Irvine Valley College, University of California, Irvine). She then gave up teaching and became a full-time writer.

Her first published novel, A Great Deliverance (1988), introduces the upper-class Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley of Scotland Yard (in private life the Earl of Asherton) and his working-class partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. When asked in an interview why she chose to create a titled hero, she spoke of the freedom of being a debut novelist, saying: "I could do anything, you see, because when I started I never thought it would be published."

Since 1988 George has published 21 more Inspector Lynley mysteries, four young adult novels in the Whidbey Island series, three collections of short stories and two self-help books for writers. She names the author John Fowles as her main literary influence.

She established the Elizabeth George Foundation, a grant for unpublished and emerging writers, in 1997.

George has taught creative writing seminars in the US, Canada and the UK.

Personal life

George married Ira Jay Toibin in 1971 and they divorced in 1995. In 2018 George was reported as being married to retired firefighter Tom McCabe. She has spoken of her struggle with depression, saying: "Happiness is an inside job – it takes a long time to learn that." She moved from Huntington Beach, California to Whidbey Island, Washington.

Reception

George has spoken of being a great Anglophile since her first visit to Britain in 1966, and of watching UK TV shows and reading books by UK novelists to "pick up the syntax of British speech." She has been praised for the authenticity of her portrayal of "the nuances, class system, language, humour and habits of the British," although not all critics have been in agreement. The Times crime critic Marcel Berlins has described her as "an exasperating writer, (who) insists on perpetuating a police procedure that hasn’t existed for decades, is not good on social mores and her dialogue often reveals a tin ear." Critics have commented adversely on the length and complexity of her novels while acknowledging the satisfying nature of the read.