The Spiral Staircase

Ethel Lina White was an Anglo-Welsh crime writer from Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, then still part of England. She was best known for her novel The Wheel Spins (1936). She Born in 1876, Ethel Lina White was the daughter of William White. Ethel White grew up in Fairlea Grange, which was built in the 1880s by her father, and started writing as a child and contributing essays and poems to children's papers. She passed the Government Examination (Second Class) in freehand drawing at Newport School of Art in 1890. She later began to write short stories. White's first three works, published between 1927 and 1930, were mainstream novels. Her first crime novel, published in 1931, was Put Out the Light. Although attention to her has faded, in her day she was as well known as writers like Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. Ethel Lina White died of ovarian cancer in London in 1944 aged 68.