The Welfare of Our Country: Social Commentary in Margery Allingham's Detective Fiction.

Scholars have acclaimed British mystery writer Margery Allingham as an important figure in the genre, but rarely have they studied her as closely as they have her contemporaries, Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. Allingham wrote a variety of novels and short stories during her career, which began in 1929 and ended with her death in 1966; her best work features her serial detective, Albert Campion. Allingham uses detective fiction to comment on contemporary British society. In presenting her vision of the condition of Engl and , she makes allegories out of her detective novels. The genre's pattern of disruption and resolution enables her to confront the threats to the social order, and to reassure herself, in fictive terms at least, that the nation will survive. Through her novels she examines the effect on British society of the Depression, the rise of fascism, World War II, post-war austerity, and the Welfare State. Because Allingham's perspective is upper-middle-class and conservative, her novels generally affirm the status quo. She endorses the hierarchical structure of English society as well as the importance of law and order. At the same time she can be highly critical of the status quo. She is especially unnerved by what she perceives as the abdication of leadership by the traditional ruling classes in the 1930's and '40's, and the empowerment of the lower classes after 1945. Throughout her career Allingham remained sensitive to the changes in British society. Her best work appeared before and during World War II: Sweet Danger (1933), Dancers in Mourning (1937), The Fashion in Shrouds (1939), and Pearls Before Swine (1945). The later, less successful novels reflect the difficulty she had in underst and ing the post-war social milieu. She continued to experiment with crime fiction formats, however, and in 1952 she published her most complex and sophisticated novel, The Tiger in the Smoke.PhDBritish and Irish literatureUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160995/1/8612578.pd