Ruth Rendell - Early Life

Early Life

Rendell was born Ruth Grasemann in 1930, in South Woodford, London. Her parents were teachers. Her mother, Ebba Kruse, was born in Sweden and brought up in Denmark; her father, Arthur Grasemann, was English. Rendell was educated at the County High School for Girls in Loughton, Essex. After high school she became a feature writer for her local paper, the Chigwell Times. Even at an early age, making up stories was irresistible to Rendell. As a reporter, she visited a house that was rumoured to be haunted and invented the ghost of an old woman. The owners threatened to sue the newspaper for devaluing their home. Later, she reported on the local tennis club's annual dinner without attending, so missing the untimely death of the after-dinner speaker in mid-speech. She resigned before she could be fired.

Rendell met her husband, Don Rendell when she was working as a newswriter. They married when she was 20, and had a son, Simon, now a psychiatric social worker who now lives in Colorado. The couple divorced in 1975, but remarried two years later.

Rendell wrote two unpublished novels before the 1964 publication of From Doon With Death, which was purchased for £75 by John Long; it was the first mystery to feature her enduring and popular detective Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford. The Monster in the Box, released in October 2009, was widely rumoured to be Wexford's last case. This turned out to be incorrect. However it was the final novel featuring Wexford as an employed policeman; in the novel that followed, The Vault, he has retired.