Lois Austen-Leigh

Austen-Leigh was born in Winterbourne, Gloucestershire,^[1] where her father Arthur Austen-Leigh was Rector. She was the great-granddaughter of James Austen (Jane Austen's brother) and granddaughter of James Edward Austen-Leigh. She had three sisters and three brothers. The family later moved to Wargrave, Berkshire, and the four girls attended St Swithun's School, Winchester (then Winchester High School for Girls).^[2] Austen-Leigh kept diary entries from 1898 to 1906.^[3] She became familiar with Cambridge University (the setting of her novel The Incredible Crime) through her uncle Augustus Austen Leigh.^[4][5]

During the First World War, Austen-Leigh worked as a gardener for the Reading Red Cross,^[6] while her sister Honor volunteered as a nurse and her brothers Arthur (d. 1918) and Lionel joined the Army.^[7] After caring for her aunt until her death, the two sisters moved to the newly built Cob House on Saxmundham Road in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.^[8] Here, they befriended the likes of composer Benjamin Britten and author M. R. James.^[9]

At the desk of her great-great aunt,^[10] Austen-Leigh wrote four mystery novels, which would be published by Herbert Jenkins: The Incredible Crime (1931), set at a fictional college of Cambridge and Wellende Old Hall in Suffolk; The Haunted Farm (1932);^[11] Rude Justice (1936);^[12] and The Gobblecock Mystery (1938).^[13] Austen-Leigh was modest about her own writing and abandoned it after the Second World War,^[4] during which she and her sister worked in local emergency services.

Following decades out-of-print, The Incredible Crime was re-published under the British Library Crime Classics banner in 2017. The re-print was edited and introduced by Kirsten Saxton.^[14] The Incredible Crime has drawn comparisons to Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night (1935) and Mavis Doriel Hay's Death on the Cherwell (1935).^[4][9]

Novels

• The Incredible Crime (1931)
• The Haunted Farm (1932)
• Rude Justice (1936)
• The Gobblecock Mystery (1938)