Demons In Her View: The Ruth Rendell Information Site

Full acknowledgement must go to the Yahoo Ruth Rendell group, where intelligent conversation about Rendell is always assured.

Last updated 10/05/2015 (Short story guide uploaded)

At the moment, these pages just offer basic information on each group of titles; I plan to add more detailed comments later.

• Novels
  From To Fear A Painted Devil to Thirteen Steps Down.
• Wexford
  The complete sequence of Chief Inspector Wexford (and let us not forget Inspector Burden) mysteries.
• Short stories
  Basic details on Rendell's seven short story collections, plus the novellas Heartstones and The Thief. There is also a more detailed breakdown of the individual stories and their publication history.
• Factual
  Introductions, anthologies, political commentary and Ruth Rendell's Suffolk.
• Barbara Vine

  

• Ine Jacet has an excellent Rendell site with detailed descriptions of each of the books, a biography and numerous links.
• Tabard Road is a comprehensive and very well-designed overview of the Wexford TV adaptations.
• Random House, Rendell's career-long publisher, has a basic page detailing her work.
• The Ruth Rendell group at Yahoo provides news, views and commentaries.

Rendell has said she hates giving interviews, and I'm not surprised; most interviewers ask exactly the same set of questions and display only a superficial knowledge of her work. Below are links to some newspaper interviews which break that mould, at least a little, plus some radio transcripts.

• Ruth Rendell on Thirteen Steps Down (NPR, 9 October 2005)
• Ruth Rendell on A Judgement In Stone (BBC World Service, 28 August 2003)
• Creeping Vine (The Independent, 5 September 1999)
• The Prime of Baroness Rendell (The Daily Telegraph, 20 June 2002)

Rendell appeared with her friend and fellow author PD James at the 2004 Cheltenham Festival of Literature on October 15. There are some photos from the event here; I'm (still) working on a transcript of the event!

• NEXT TITLE: A feature in the Scotsman reveals that Rendell has submitted her next Barbara Vine manuscript, The Birthday Party, to her publishers. I won't be surprised if the title changes before it appears, given that it's also the name of one of Harold Pinter's best-known plays. In the same feature, Rendell also hints that she may also soon write a memoir.

• CURRENT TITLE: The latest full-length Rendell novel, featuring Wexford, is called Not In The Flesh, and was released in the UK on August 2, 2007.

• A novella entitled The Thief was issued on March 4, 2006 as part of a World Book Day campaign to encourage literacy. For Rendell's thoughts on this title and more background, visit the dedicated page.

• The latest Barbara Vine title is The Minotaur, published on April 7 2005 in the UK and on March 21 2006 in the US; full details on the dedicated page. Rendell gave several interviews in support of the book, including interesting discussions for Woman's Hour and the Telegraph.

• How many books has Rendell written?
• What's the difference between Vine and Rendell?

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