Kate Summerscale author page

Kate Summerscale biography

Kate Summerscale is a British author and journalist known for her works of narrative non-fiction, particularly in the genres of history and true crime. She studied at Oxford University and later at Stanford University. Summerscale has worked as an obituaries editor and literary editor at The Daily Telegraph.

Her first book, The Queen of Whale Cay, was published in 1997 and explores the life of Joe Carstairs, a wealthy British powerboat racer. Summerscale is perhaps best known for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House, published by Bloomsbury in 2008. This book examines a real-life Victorian murder case and the detective who investigated it, drawing on historical records and contemporary accounts.

Summerscale’s subsequent works include Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace (2012), which investigates a Victorian divorce scandal, and The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer (2016), which delves into the case of a child accused of murder in late nineteenth-century London. She has also written The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story, published by Bloomsbury in 2020, which explores a case of reported poltergeist activity in 1930s London.

Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2008.