Dame Margaret Isabel ColeDBE (néePostgate; 6 May 1893 – 7 May 1980) was an English socialistpolitician, writer and poet. She wrote several detective stories jointly with her husband, G. D. H. Cole. She went on to hold important posts in London government after the Second World War.
Having completed her course (Cambridge did not allow women to graduate formally until 1947), Margaret became a classics teacher at St Paul's Girls' School. Her poem The Falling Leaves, a response to the First World War, and currently on the OCR English Literature syllabus at GCSE, shows the influence of Latin poetry in its use of long and short syllables to create mimetic effects.
Pacifist period
During World War I, her brother Raymond Postgate sought exemption from military service as a socialistconscientious objector, but was denied recognition and jailed for refusing military orders. Her support for her brother led her to a belief in pacifism. During her subsequent campaign against conscription, she met G. D. H. Cole, whom she married in a registry office in August 1918.[1] The couple worked together for the Fabian Society before moving to Oxford in 1924, where they both taught and wrote.
In the early 1930s, Margaret abandoned her pacifism in reaction to the suppression of socialist movements by governments in Germany and Austria and to events in the Spanish Civil War.
Brian Harrison recorded an oral history interview with Cole, in July 1975, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews.[5] Cole talks about her family and upbringing, her involvement in the Labour Party, and of her dislike for Christabel Pankhurst's extreme suffragism.
Dame Margaret Cole died on 7 May 1980, the day after her 87th birthday. Her estate was valued at £137,957.[6]
Writings
Cole wrote several books, including a biography of her husband.[7] Her brother Raymond was a labour historian, journalist and novelist.[8] She and her husband jointly authored many mystery novels.[9]
Margaret and her husband created a partnership, but not a full marriage: her husband took little interest in sex and regarded women as a distraction from men. Nevertheless, they had a son and two daughters. Margaret Cole comprehensively documented their life together in a biography she wrote of her husband after his death.[10]
The Coles wrote 29 detective novels together, credited as "G.D.H. and M. Cole".
Detective fiction
Novels and Short Story Collections
G. D. H. Cole
The Brooklyn Murders (1923). Margaret Cole did not contribute to this novel, which is noted here solely to pre-empt confusion.
G. D. H. and M. Cole
The Death of a Millionaire (1925)
The Blatchington Tangle (1926). Serialised, The Daily Herald (1926)
Poison in the Garden Suburb (1929); serialised, The Daily Herald (1929). Also known as Poison in a Garden Suburb
Burglars in Bucks (1930) aka The Berkshire Mystery
Corpse in Canonicals (1930) aka The Corpse in the Constable's Garden
The Great Southern Mystery (1931) aka The Walking Corpse
Dead Man's Watch (1931)
Death of a Star (1932)
A Lesson in Crime (1933)
A Lesson in Crime; A Question of Coincidence; Mr. Steven's Insurance Policy; Blackmail in the Village; The Cliff Path Ghost; Sixteen Years Run; Wilson Calling (Wilson); The Brentwardine Mystery; The Mother of the Detective; A Dose of Cyanide; Superintendent Wakley's Mistake.
Death in a Tankard (Wilson); Murder in Church (Wilson); The Bone of the Dinosaur (Wilson); A Tale of Two Suitcases (Wilson); The Motive (Wilson); Glass (Wilson); Murder in Broad Daylight (Wilson); Ye Olde Englysshe Christmasse or Detection in the Eighteenth Century; The Letters; The Partner; A Present from the Empire; The Strange Adventures of a Chocolate Box; Strychnine Tonic.
^ abcMarc Stears, "Cole , Dame Margaret Isabel (1893–1980)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 6 May 2017.
^Jackson, W. Eric (1965). Achievement. A Short History of the London County Council. Longmans. p. 258.
^London School of Economics and Political Science. "The Suffrage Interviews". London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
^Evans, Curtis (2012). Masters of the "humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920–1961. McFarland & Company. ISBN9780786490899.
