FAMOUS ESSEX AUTHORS

Dee Gordon is an adopted Essex girl, having started life in the East End of London. Although widely published in teenage magazines when working as a teenage secretary, she did not return to this, her first love, until selling her recruitment business in 2000. Since then she has written nineteen local history books and a couple of novels as well as the occasional poem. She has been living in the Southend area since 1983, a place she aspired to after many day trips from the East End in the 1950s. Her late husband and autistic son have not appreciated her efforts, considering them "such a lot of work." But she considers that the work has been fun, interesting and worthwhile, and she has learnt a lot about her adopted county!Her most successful books, in terms of sales, have also been the ones she has most enjoyed researching, i.e. Southend Memories (about the heyday of the city in the 1950s and 1960s), The Little Book of the East End (trivia about the area where she was brought up), and Infamous Essex Women (revelations about famous women associated with Essex). She thoroughly enjoyed studying for her belated B.A.Hons. in English Literature with the Open University and is a member of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, contributing to magazines such as Essex Life, Best of British, This England and Who Do You Think You Are? See www.deegordon-writer.com for more information.

• 13Douglas Adams15Margery Allingham19Sabine Baring-Gould22Nina Bawden24Arnold Bennett27Samuel Bensusan30Ursula Bloom34Robert Buchanan37Margaret Cavendish40Joseph Conrad43Warwick Deeping46Daniel Defoe50Henry de Vere Stacpoole52John Fowles56Margaret Gatty 58Elinor Glyn62Eleanor Graham64James Hilton67Joseph Hocking70Sheila Holland74Fergus Hume77Harriett Jay80Sarah Kane82The Kernahans85Denise Levertov87William Morris90Arthur Morrison93Ruth Pitter96Francis Quarles98Roland Quittenton100Ruth Rendell104Dorothy Sayers107Dodie Smith110Susan Smythies112Joseph Strutt114The Taylors of Ongar117H.G.Wells121James Wentworth Day122R.D.Wingfield125Violet Winspear128William Winstanley130Mary Wollstonecraft132Lady Emma Caroline Wood134Lady Mary Wroth136 The Authors Who Did Not Quite Make the Essex list- mainly because of short stays139 Poetic Licence - well known figures with more tenuous links to Essex143 Essex Links to Classical Literature - references to Essex in some of the classics146 More Literary Connections to Essex - touches on playwrights, historians, and others connected to both writing and Essex150Conclusion

Most Essex readers know that our county is one of the UK’smost populated, but have never perhaps realised just how many of the world’sbest authors, actors and journalists have been in  born inour county. Did you know, for instance that Douglas Adams, Margery Allingham,Nina Bawden, Daniel Defoe, Ruth Rendell, Dodie Smith, H G Wells, Mary Wollstonecraft- just to mention a few that have had a connection with Essex? And Dee Gordon,the author who has carried out tremendous research into these and dozens ofother local luminaries in her book published by the Essex Hundred Publications.The book has been a labour of love by someone who haswritten mainly local history up to this point, which encompasses a love ofbooks, a fascination with writers and  acuriosity about celebrity culture. The book is a wonderful cornucopia of themost amazing Essex writers. Silvia Kent for Village Emporium