The Author
"Miss Quin", (as she calls herself), is a big Agatha Christie fan. Having read nearly all of Christie's works, she was inspired to write her own 'whodunnits'.
However, although influenced by Christie, Miss Q wanted to set her short stories in an earlier time period. She chose the Victorian era as the setting for her stories because that was a period of history she'd researched and takes an interest in.
After reading many historic novels and period dramas, Miss Q conceived the idea for the Bainton Gray stories, by combining her love of Agatha Christie whodunnit murder mysteries with her knowledge of the Victorian period. The characters were partly inspired by research into her family history.
Whilst researching family history, Miss Q learnt that many of her Victorian ancestors from Norfolk had been in service at large country estates. Some were housekeepers, maids, valets, gardeners, grooms and gamekeepers. After researching what life was like for servants in Victorian times, Miss Q used this knowledge to write her first story about the servants of a country manor house.
She then discovered that a distant relative had been a valet to the MP Earl Wodehouse at his London residence. Being a fan of P.G. Wodehouse, Miss Quin was inspired to write her first whodunnit story using a valet as one of the suspects.
Miss Quin came across the name Bainton whilst researching family history and decided to use it for her main character. One of her ancestors had been a milliner, so this gave her the idea of having a travelling hat seller. She is also very interested in Victorian social history and fashions, so again she felt she could use this information in her stories.
A few of her ancestors had unusual names. Some of their names have been used in her stories. eg. Clementia and Alethia were used as the twin sisters' names in the first story. Elsewhere, names used in the stories have been taken from Shakespeare or Victorian name books.
Miss Quin also likes reading classic works and poetry and has read a lot of Victorian literature. She cites her favourite authors as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and many more.
