Sleuths and Spies: the rise of the 'Everywoman' in detective and thriller fiction of the 1920s

The 1920s, frequently referred to as the ‘Roaring Twenties’ or the ‘Jazz Age’, are often associated with opulent lifestyles and the emergence of striking fashion and furniture trends. Themes in the history of women in crime and thriller fiction show, however, that this decade was also a difficult period in the West, one of widespread financial hardship and of living in the shadow of social turmoil: anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories and fear of the foreign dominated the mainstream press as well as popular fiction. It was also a period in which women were working to navigate their way through a society changed forever by the experience of war. This paper examines some of the well-known detective and thriller fiction writers of the 1920s – Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, John Buchan and William Le Queux – and shows how their characters chart the sexualisation of women as well as women’s resistance to the prevailing views of the day. Fictional women of this period represent ‘Everywoman’: independent and intelligent and, most importantly, sleuths and spies in their own right

A mixed digital / physical snapshot of early internet / web usage in New Zealand

We are in the early stages of developing a unique physical and digital record of New Zealand's early experience of the Internet

Better than Biggles: Michael Annesley’s ‘Lawrie Fenton’ spy thrillers.

Captain F.A.M. Webster, the athlete, athletics coach and author who lived from 1886 to 1949, wrote a series of fifteen spy thrillers under the pseudonym of Michael Annesley. His hero, Lawrie Fenton, is a lively and laid-back secret agent for the fictional Intelligence Branch of the (British) Foreign Office. The books were published between 1935 and 1950, and the series is important because of its European settings, analyses of contemporary politics, insights into contemporary points of view, and snapshots of events and places. Fenton was a new and exciting hero for his times. The paper establishes Webster’s unrecognized but important influence on the development of the spy thriller. The photographs are from the Webster family collection