Susan Hill

Biography:

Dame Susan Hill, DBE (born 5 February 1942) is an English novelist and nonfiction author. Her works include The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror, and I'm the King of the Castle, which earned her the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971.

She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honors and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honors for her contributions to writing.

Hill was born in the North Yorkshire town of Scarborough. Her hometown was subsequently mentioned in her novel A Change for the Better (1969), as well as in short tales such as Cockles and Mussels.

Hill's works, particularly her ghost story The Woman in Black, released in 1983, are written in a descriptive gothic manner. She has shown an interest in the traditional English ghost story, which, like the great ghost stories by Montague Rhodes James and Daphne du Maurier, depends on tension and atmosphere to generate its effect. The novel was adapted into a play in 1987, and it is still running in London's West End, joining a list of plays that have been running for more than twenty years. It was also adapted for television in 1989, and Hammer Cinematic Productions released a film adaptation in 2012. In 1992, she published The Mist in the Mirror, another ghost story with similar elements, and in 1993, Mrs de Winter, a sequel to du Maurier's Rebecca.

Hill launched The Various Haunts of Men, a series of crime novels starring investigator Simon Serrailler, in 2004. This was followed by The Pure in Heart (2005), The Risk of Darkness (2006), The Vows of Silence (2009), The Shadows in the Street (2010), The Betrayal of Trust (2011), A Question of Identity (2013), The Soul of Discretion (2014), Hero, another short story (2016), The Comforts of Home in 2018 and The Benefit of Hindsight in October 2019.

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