Evelyn Berckman
Evelyn Domenica Berckman was an American writer noted for her detective and Gothic horror novels. In addition to her novels and screenplays, she also wrote four non-fiction titles about British naval history.
Personal life
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Berckman was the daughter of woolen goods merchant Aaron Berkman and his wife Hannah who emigrated to the United States in 1891 and from 1900 to 1936 resided in Germantown, a suburb some seven miles from downtown Philadelphia.After attending the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she was a contemporary of Aaron Copland among others, Berckman spent the 1930s in New York City, living on East 60th Street on the city's Upper East Side. She worked as a piano teacher, and as a pianist and composer, before this career was curtailed by paralysis brought on by arduous sessions of piano practice. Her compositions were performed by the Pro Arte Quartet and the Philadelphia Orchestra among others.
Her first novel, The Evil of Time, was published in 1954. Berckman made several visits to London, staying for extended periods in various Mayfair hotels while she wrote, building up a second career "to avoid the threat of poverty". In 1960 she moved to the city permanently, settling in the Kensington area and living at various addresses until her death from heart disease in 1978.
Research for her books brought her in contact with art historian Rupert Gunnis, to whom she dedicated her 1967 novel The Heir of Starvelings, an apparently true story which she based on anecdotal information from Gunnis.