Kate Summerscale is a British author and journalist, best known for her celebrated works of narrative non-fiction, which include the award-winning The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
After graduating from Oxford University with a double first, Summerscale embarked upon a career in newspaper journalism, rising to become literary editor of the Daily Telegraph in 2005. Her first book, 1997’s The Queen of Whale Cay, was inspired by an obituary she wrote for the newspaper. Summerscale left her day job to write The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, an account of a pioneering Victorian murder enquiry that scooped the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize (now Baillie Gifford Prize) for non-fiction. The book was subsequently turned into a television drama. Two of Summerscale’s other works, Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace (2012) and The Wicked Boy (2016), also focused on real-life nineteenth-century scandals, whilst 2020’s The Haunting of Alma Fielding explores an alleged case of ghostly possession in 1930s’ England.
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