Dorothy Gilman

Dorothy Edith Gilman (June 25, 1923 – February 2, 2012) was an American writer.

She is best known for the Mrs. Pollifax series.

Begun in a time when women in mystery meant Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and international espionage meant young government men like James Bond and the spies of John le Carré and Graham Greene, Emily Pollifax, her heroine, became a spy in her 60s and is very likely the only spy in literature to belong simultaneously to the CIA and the local garden club.

Dorothy Gilman was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to minister James Bruce and Essa (Starkweather) Gilman.

She started writing when she was 9.

At 11, she competed against 10- to 16-year-olds in a story contest and won first place.

Planning to write and illustrate books for children, she attended Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1940 to 1945.

Under her married name, Dorothy Gilman Butters, she wrote books for young adults (except as noted) beginning in the late 1940s:

She also contributed to Good Housekeeping, Jack and Jill, Redbook, Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, The Writer, and other magazines.

She married teacher Edgar A. Butters, Jr. September 15, 1945; they divorced in 1965.

The couple had two children, Christopher and Jonathan.

Gilman attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1964.

She was Unitarian.

Gilman worked as an art teacher and telephone operator before becoming an author.

She wrote children's stories for more than ten years under the name Dorothy Gilman Butters and then began writing adult novels about Mrs. Pollifax, a retired grandmother who becomes a CIA agent.

The Mrs. Pollifax series made Gilman famous.

Gilman's life is strongly reflected in her writing.

She traveled extensively, and her travels became the settings for her Mrs. Pollifax books.

She also contributed a chapter to the book, On Creative Writing, edited by Paul Engle (1964).

Gilman began writing under her maiden name for the first book of the Mrs. Pollifax series, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax. The heroine, the eccentric Emily Pollifax, is a 60-ish, bored, garden-clubbing grandmother, and widow.

Considering her life without real purpose, and after briefly contemplating suicide, she presents herself to the CIA, offering to serve as an agent.

Initially recruited through a misunderstanding, she is excited, and a bit clueless about her role, but she quickly adapts to an unfortunate turn of events, and displays the common sense and grit that will guide her through future intrigues.

In the 1970s, she moved to a property in a small town in Nova Scotia where she grew most of her own vegetables and herbs.

This period was the focus of her memoir, A New Kind of Country.

Her knowledge of medicinal herbs informed several of her stories, including A Nun in the Closet and Thale's Folly.

Thale's Folly is one of her few books featuring a male protagonist; most of her books feature strong women having adventures around the world.

In addition to Nova Scotia, Gilman spent much of her life in Connecticut, Maine, and New Mexico.

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax was filmed by United Artists in 1970 as Mrs. Pollifax-Spy starring Rosalind Russell.

Angela Lansbury starred in the made-for-TV movie The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax in 1999.

The series, which ended in 2000 with Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled, consists of fast-paced escapades filled with danger and intrigue in Mexico, Turkey, Thailand, China, Morocco, Zambia, Sicily, and elsewhere.

Additional books she wrote under the name Dorothy Gilman:

In 2010 Gilman was awarded the annual Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

In 2012, she died at age 88 of complications of Alzheimer's disease.