| bc | Arthur W. Upfield, Creator of
Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) of the
Queensland Police.
16 June 2009: 3 Acts of Murder, a telemovie about the Murchision murders, premiered on ABC1 in Australia. Set in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this true crime story stars Robert Menzies as Arthur Upfield who devises the perfect murder for his Bony novel, The Sands of Windee, unaware that it will be used in real life. A DVD of the movie will be released on 3 September 2009. To pre-order it, or for more information, go to www.3actsofmurder.com.au . 12 February 2009: The Murchison Murders, Upfield's account of what happened when Snowy Rowles used the perfect murder method when killing three men, republished in Up and Down the Real Australia, another collection of Upfield's shortworks edited by Kees de Hoog. Available from www.lulu.com/kdehoog . July 2008: Arthur W Upfield: Life and Time of Bony's Man, a new Upfield biography by Andrew Milnor, released and available from all major online bookstores. 27 February 2008: Up and Down Australia: Short Stories by Upfield and edited by Kees de Hoog, is published by Lulu.com. Available from www.lulu.com/kdehoog. Arthur William Upfield is well known to aficionados of crime detection fiction as the creator of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) of the Queensland Police who appears in 29 novels, most set in outback Australia. It's not so well known that he also wrote another six published novels, as well as a biography and numerous articles published in Australia and overseas. Upfield was born into a family of drapers on 1 September 1890 in Gosport on Portsmouth Bay, Hampshire, England. An avid reader of boys' adventure magazines that were popular at the time, he did not do well at school. Apprenticed aged 16 to a real estate agent and surveyor, he was more interested in writing novels and other, more daring, escapades. He once claimed his father sent him to Australia in despair, saying: “It is so far away that you will never save enough money to return", but it is more likely he wanted to go. Arriving in Adelaide in 1911, Upfield soon went to the outback where he worked as offsider to a mule team driver, fence builder and boundary rider, opal digger and drover, to mention just a few. He quickly developed an attachment to the outback that laid the foundations for the rest of his life. On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he joined the Australian Imperial Forces and served in Egypt, Gallipoli, England and France. In 1915 he married Ann Douglass, an Australian Army nurse, in Cairo, and a son was born in England in 1920. They returned to Australia in 1921 and Upfield "went bush" again soon afterwards. He had continued to write desultorily, and in 1924 was persuaded to "have a go" at becoming a professional writer. After four novels and several articles were published, he left the bush in 1931 to live in Perth with his family and write full time. With the help of workmates while working on the No 1 Rabbit Proof Fence in Western Australia, Upfield developed a method of disposing of a body for his second Bony novel, The Sands of Windee. One "mate", Snowy Rowles, adopted that method when committing at least two murders in 1929, and Upfield gave evidence at Rowles' trial in Perth in 1932. See Murder on the Rabbit Proof Fence for more details. Upfield joined The Herald newspaper in Melbourne in 1933, but was retrenched and returned to freelance writing the following year. Over the next five years his output of articles and short stories was prolific as he struggled to make a living. The only novels he wrote during that time and later were Bony stories - many were serialised in journals as well as published as books. When World War II began in 1939 he joined Military Intelligence as a censor. He resumed writing in 1944, producing about one novel a year. Some Bony novels, previously published only in the UK and Australia, were sent to a US publisher in 1943. They proved very popular and most of the Bony novels were published there within a short time, as were those he wrote later. The extra sales allowed Upfield to live comfortably from writing Bony novels for the rest of his life. In 1946 he left Anne to live with Jessica Hawke, a widow, in a defacto relationship that lasted until his death in 1964. Together they moved from Melbourne to Aireys Inlet on the south coast of Victoria in 1951, then to Bermagui on the south coast of New South Wales in 1954 where Upfield indulged his favourite pastime of swordfishing, and finally to Bowral just south of Sydney in 1957. Upfield spent several months each year wandering around the outback until poor health prevented it. In 1948, he led a National Geographic Society expedition to Wolf Creek Crater in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, which he later used as the setting for The Will of the Tribe. A feature of all Upfield's writings is first hand knowledge of the locations, both real and imaginary, together with highly evocative descriptions of the landscapes. For example, Death of a Swagman takes place around the Darling River in New South Wales where he spent the most time in the bush; The New Shoe was set in Airey's Point; and Bermagui was the location for The Mystery of Swordfish Reef. Upfield is now recognised as the first Australian writer of mystery stories. But his books were never critically acclaimed here during his lifetime, despite their popularity in the UK and the US where the mystery novel had become an established form of literature. His response was to write An Author Bites the Dust, published in 1948, an attack on the Australian literary establishment. The Cake in the Hatbox was a runner-up for the 1956 Gold Dagger award from The Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. The Bushman Who Came Back was awarded the 1957 Book of the Year by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and was nominated for the 1958 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers Guild of America. Upfield was the first non-American admitted to the Guild. Over the years his books have been translated into many languages, read over radio, and transformed into radio plays and television series. A Bony comic strip was created in 1961 but it did not gain syndication. Follow My Dust by Jessica Hawke is Upfield's official biography, but there is a strong suspicion that he partly wrote it. Some aspects of his life, such as his marriage and army experiences, are barely mentioned; and there are significant discrepancies with an earlier unpublished autobiography. It's generally agreed that his best novel is Death of a Lake in which the solution to the mystery is revealed when a lake dries up. Upfield himself considered Gripped by Drought to be one of his best and I agree. Used copies of all Bony novels are still readily available, but The House of Cain, A Royal Abduction and Gripped by Drought are quite rare. The Beach of Atonement has recently been republished at http://stores.lulu.com/thewombat. I have always enjoyed mystery stories starting with Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's stories. I had read most of the Bony books when, looking for an interest outside of work, I decided in 2001 to delve further into the works of an author. It made sense to choose an Australian author, and from that point Upfield virtually chose himself.
Published Novels With alternative titles and in order of publication (in book form unless otherwise indicated). * Denotes non-Bony novels. *The House of Cain, 1928.
Other
Published Works The Gifts of Frank Cobbold is a biography written in 1935 and first published in 2008. Copies appear to be limited at this stage. I have found about 250 short stories and articles by Upfield published in magazines and journals including The Wide World Magazine, The West Australian newspaper, The Herald (Melbourne) newspaper, Walkabout, and The Australian Journal. 33 fiction stories, including the only known Bony short story, as well as the unfinished first chapter for another Bony novel, were published in an anthology called Up and Down Australia in 2008. There are humorous yarns, crime stories, comedies, and dire tales about the dangers of living and working in the bush. 45 autobiographical articles, ranging from humorous outback anecdotes to personal experiences at Gallipoli and the Somme during the First World War were published in an anthology called Up and Down the Real Australia in 2009. It includes The Murchison Murders, Upfield's account of how the 'perfect murder' was developed for his second Bony novel, The Sands of Windee; how Snowy Rowles used it to commit at least one, probably three, murders in 1929; how the crime was detected and solved; and what happened at Rowles' trial in 1932. Both books are available online from www.lulu.com/kdehoog . Some other
articles:
Further Research
Other Web Sites CB&M Editorial note: Winds of Evil was serialised in the Australian magazine Everybody's, beginning 24th January, 1962. Sign
our Guestbook Back to Collecting Books & Magazines INDEX Click to subscribe to Collecting Books and Magazines Newsletter. |
bc |
