Rosemary Timperley

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Oddments and Miscellany

Short story from Truth reprinted

A rare short story by Rosemary Timperley entitled "Hell, Twice Daily" has been reprinted in the book The Ash-Tree Press Annual Macabre 2004: The Last 'Queer Stories from Truth'. This anthology, edited by Jack Adrian, collects thirty-one stories that originally appeared in Truth, a weekly magazine that was published in England from 1877 to 1957. Further details can be found at the Ash-Tree Press website, where you can order the book directly.

The Listening Child: Three Short Novels

The only collection of Rosemary Timperley's short fiction to appear in her lifetime was The Listening Child: Three Short Novels (1956) published in the U.K. by James Barrie. The book contains the following three stories: "The Listening Child", "Child in the Dark" and "Children Afraid". This collection was also published in the U.S.A. by the Thomas Y. Crowell Company under the title Child in the Dark: Three Novelettes. The American edition was reviewed by Anthony Boucher in the January 1957 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

From Another World And Other Ghost Stories

The Sundial Press have published in 2016 a collection of twenty-two of Rosemary Timperley's ghost stories. From Another World And Other Ghost Stories has been compiled by Richard Dalby and is made up of various supernatural tales that originally appeared in magazines and anthologies. The book can be ordered directly from the publisher's website.

Contents and Original Source Publication Details:

New collection of short stories planned

Home From The Sea is the title of a forthcoming paperback collection of short stories by Rosemary Timperley. The fourteen tales assembled in this volume were originally printed in the Sheerness Times-Guardian newspaper in 1954. More details on this book will follow in the coming months, although unfortunately this collection is on hold at the moment as I am busy with other projects.

Plays and adaptations

Rosemary Timperley wrote a number of stories and plays for radio and television. Her radio scripts appeared on the London Capital Radio show Moment of Terror, as well as on the BBC World Service series Haunted. Other plays were broadcast on British radio programs such as the late-night play series Just Before Midnight, the BBC's Morning Story and Woman's Hour programs. Among her radio plays are Shadows of the Past (BBC Radio 4, 1972), Who's Afraid...?, Hanged on Tuesday and Green Ribbon. A number of her short stories were adapted to radio on the BBC Light Programme. Rosemary Timperley's popular short story "Harry" has been adapted to both film and radio several times. "Harry" was filmed as an episode of the television series First Person, broadcast in Canada in 1960 and was also adapted in the U.S.A as the short film Twice Removed (2003), which was directed by Heather Hughes.

Her novels The Velvet Smile (1961), Yesterday's Voices (1961) and Juliet (1974) have been adapted by the BBC. Timperley also wrote several plays specially for television, the first of which was A Card from Alison, broadcast in October 1959. This was followed by Missing From Home, which was shown on the ITV channel on April 8, 1960, and was adapted by Timperley from Shelley Smith's short story "An Idyll". Other television plays included The Demands of Love and Shadow of Guilt. Timperley also wrote Curtain Fall, a 1968 episode of the BBC One series Boy Meets Girl, starring Jack Hedley. A number of her screenplays were produced by Anglia Television, for which Timperley was, briefly, a contract writer. Timperley's first novel, A Dread of Burning (1956), was made into the stage play The Eyes of Youth by Ted Willis in 1959. Two of Timperley's plays were published in book form in the 1950s: The Man Who Collected Beauty: A Play in Three Acts (Leonard's Plays, 1952) and Catherine: A Play in Two Acts (Leonard's Plays, 1955).

Please visit the Timperley on Radio page where you will find a list of all the known plays, adaptations, short stories and talks (on various subjects) given by Rosemary Timperley that were broadcast on British radio between 1951 and 1987.

Note: If anyone has any more information on Timperley's radio and television plays and adaptations of her work, I would be very glad to hear from them.

Where to buy Rosemary Timperley's books and short stories

Sadly, all of Timperley's novels are out-of-print. It is interesting to note that many of her novels, most of which were published by Robert Hale, were originally bought up by various public libraries in the U.K. Ex-library copies of her novels do however crop up regularly in second-hand bookshops. Her short stories are nearly all out-of-print. They are to be found in various anthologies and back issues of the London Mystery Selection as well as numerous other periodicals including the (now defunct) London newspaper the Evening News and magazines such as Reveille. Other than searching the shelves of second-hand bookshops, online resources such as The Advanced Book Exchange (highly recommended), Bookfinder and eBay are very useful tools that I have employed in tracking down Timperley's work.

Other websites of interest

An Index to the Fiction Published in The Star    An index to the fiction published in the London evening newspaper The Star.
The Evening News Short Story Index     An index to the short stories published in the London Evening News.
The Daily Mail Fiction Index: 1896 - 1950     An index to the fiction published in the Daily Mail newspaper.
The Unofficial Raymond F. Jones Website    Author of many science fiction novels and short stories.
Jack Ritchie: An Appreciation and Bibliography     Writer of over three hundred short stories, mostly in the mystery field.
A Tribute to Amelia Reynolds Long     A mystery and science fiction author; also a poet.
The Basil Wells Tribute Website     An author of many science fiction and fantasy short stories.
The Arthur Porges Fan Site     A prolific writer of short stories in the science fiction, fantasy, horror and detective fiction genres, as well as a poet and essayist.
The H. B. Hickey Fan Page    Author of the novel Saddles West and dozens of sf, fantasy, western & detective short stories.
The C. T. Stoneham Tribute Page     An author, big-game hunter and naturalist who lived in Kenya for much of his life.
F. W. Thomas: Star Man     Essay dedicated to a journalist and humorist whose writings appeared frequently in the London newspaper The Star.
The Ursula Bloom Bibliography     A website listing the author's novels, autobiographies, biographies, nonfiction books and short stories.

Other authors

I enjoy reading many authors and some of my favourites are: Edward D. Hoch, Henry Slesar, Arthur Porges, Raymond F. Jones, Amelia Reynolds Long, Jack Vance, Clifford D. Simak, Robert Sheckley, Clark Ashton Smith, Edmund Cooper, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Zenna Henderson, Ross Rocklynne, Robert Silverberg, Jack Ritchie, Stanley G. Weinbaum, H. Beam Piper, Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton, Fredric Brown, Gordon R. Dickson, Frank O' Rourke, Alan E. Nourse, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Nictzin Dyalhis, Clare Winger Harris, Arthur Tofte, Mary Williams, David R. Bunch, Basil Wells, Talmage Powell, H. B. Hickey, Ed Lacy, C. T. Stoneham, Arthur Sellings, Audrey Erskine Lindop, Eando Binder, E. C. Tubb, L. P. Davies, Mary Gallati, Paul Feakes, Sydney J. Bounds, Elijah Ellis, Rosemary Timperley, Hugh B. Cave, Kathleen Sky, Elizabeth Myers, Anne Frank, F. W. Thomas, Philip E. High, A. G. Gardiner (Alpha of the Plough), Ursula Bloom, Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Jacobi, Margaret St. Clair, Phyllis Eisenstein, Eric Frank Russell and Frank Sisk.

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