Barbara Paul

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Barbara Jeanne Paul (June 5, 1931 – June 6, 2022) was an American writer of mystery and science fiction novels and short stories.

Biography

Born Barbara Jeanne Traber in Maysville, Kentucky, she graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1953 and received a master's degree from the University of Redlands in 1957. She also studied at Southern Illinois University and, on fellowships, in Oslo and Vienna.

Paul's original field was theatre. She taught at several colleges and universities, including Berry College in Georgia and Erskine College in South Carolina, where she also worked as a drama director. She was herself involved in theatrical productions as both director and performer. In 1969 she received her doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh with a dissertation on the tragic structure of the plays of Philip Massinger and subsequently taught at the university. She eventually left university teaching to write full-time. During her years in Pittsburgh she also wrote book reviews for the Pittsburgh Press.

Her first science fiction story, Answer "Affirmative" or "Negative", appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact in April 1972. Her first novels, An Exercise for Madmen and Pillars of Salt, followed in 1978. With The Fourth Wall (1979) she turned to mystery fiction, which became the main focus of her work.

A number of her novels feature in-jokes and references to other works. Most notably, the character Curt Holland was influenced by Kerr Avon from the British television series Blake's 7. Paul discussed the connection herself on a page entitled "Holland and Avon" on her former website.

Paul lived in Pittsburgh for many years; in 1985 the Pittsburgh Press described her as a Shadyside author. She later lived in Sacramento, California, and eventually in Massachusetts. Most recently she lived in a retirement community in Marshfield, where she died on June 6, 2022, one day after her 91st birthday.

BarbaraPaul.com

For many years Paul maintained an extensive personal website at barbarapaul.com. Besides information and personal comments on her own novels, stories and characters, the site contained several larger reference projects.

One of these was Titles from Shakespeare, a collection of more than 2,400 titles derived from quotations from Shakespeare. The section devoted to Hamlet alone contained more than 700 entries and was divided into five pages, one for each act.

Another section, Virtual Murder, was a guide to mystery-related resources on the Web, including writers, publishers, booksellers and magazines.

The original website is now offline.

Name confusion

Barbara Paul should not be confused with the British novelist Barbara Ovstedal (1921–2012), who also published books under the name Barbara Paul before becoming better known under the pseudonym Rosalind Laker.

Novels such as The Seventeenth Stair, The Curse of Halewood, Devil's Fire, Love's Revenge and The Frenchwoman, which are sometimes attributed to Barbara Paul in online catalogues, are sometimes wrongly attributed.

Bibliography

Marian Larch

See: Marian Larch

Mystery novels

  • The Fourth Wall (1979)
  • Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue (1980)
  • First Gravedigger (1980)
  • Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy (1981)
  • Kill Fee (1985)
  • But He Was Already Dead When I Got There (1986)
  • In-Laws and Outlaws (1990)

Opera Mysteries

  • A Cadenza for Caruso (1984)
  • Prima Donna at Large (1985)
  • A Chorus of Detectives (1987)

Science fiction novels

  • An Exercise for Madmen (1978)
  • Pillars of Salt (1978)
  • Bibblings (1979)
  • Under the Canopy (1980)
  • The Three-Minute Universe (1988), a Star Trek novel

Mystery short stories

  • The Favor (July 1976)
  • Appetites (August 1987)
  • Archimedes and the Doughnuts (1991)
  • Jack Be Quick (1991)
  • Making Lemonade (1991)
  • Scat (1991)
  • Who What When Where Why (1991)
  • Homebodies (1992)
  • Close, But No Cigar (1993)
  • Ho Ho Ho (1993)
  • Play Nice (March 1994)
  • SpaceCat (1994)
  • Okay, Diogenes, You Can Stop Looking -- We Found Him (1995)
  • Peanut Butter and Kelly (April 1995)
  • Midnight Sun (1995)
  • French Asparagus (1996)
  • The Sleuth of Christmas Past (1996)
  • Sic Transit Gloria (August 1997)
  • Portrait of the Artist as a Young Corpse (1997)
  • Auld Lang What? (1997)
  • Stet (1998)
  • Go to the Devil (1998)
  • The Secret President (1999)
  • Clean Sweep (1999)
  • The Reluctant Op (September/October 1999)
  • Eleemosynary, My Dear Watson (1999)
  • Golden Retriever (December 2001)

Science fiction short stories

  • Answer Affirmative or Negative (April 1972)
  • The Untameable Part (May 1973)
  • The Slow and Gentle Progress of Trainee Bell-Ringers (1978)
  • The Seven Deadly Sessions (January 1981)
  • Scarecrow Duty (March 1983)
  • All the Dogs of Europe (September 1983)
  • I Have To Wait for Ben Jonson (May 1990)
  • The Secret (1993)
  • The Comfort of Walls (1993)
  • Never Moon a Werewolf (1995)
  • Totally Tallulah (1995)
  • Swimming the Moat (1996)
  • Fatal Error 1000 (1996)
  • Earth Surrenders (1997)
  • Payback (1997)
  • Shakespeare Minus One (1999)

Adaptations

  • Dream Girl (1986), an episode of Tales from the Darkside, based on a story by Paul
  • Murder C.O.D. (1990), TV film based on Kill Fee
  • Insel der Furcht (produced 1995, first broadcast on ProSieben in 1997), German TV film based on In-Laws and Outlaws

External links

Retrieved from "https://www.barbarapaul.space/index.php?title=Barbara_Paul&oldid=14"