H. C. Asterley
Encyclopedia
Hugh Cecil Asterley was a British author and civil servant, who wrote crime and mystery stories and novels, usually with a south-east Asian setting, as H. C. Asterley.
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His first novel, Rowena Goes Too Far was published in 1931. A bestseller in the UK, it was banned in Australia due to customs belief that it “lacked sufficient claim to the literary to excuse the obscenity” (Marita Bullock and Nicole Moore: Banned In Australia, A Bibliography).
His 1961 novel, Escape to Berkshire, was a change in style, being a post-nuclear war survival novel about the destruction of, and escape from, London.
Career
Asterley was a civil servant, who spent much of his career in SingaporeSingapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
.
His first novel, Rowena Goes Too Far was published in 1931. A bestseller in the UK, it was banned in Australia due to customs belief that it “lacked sufficient claim to the literary to excuse the obscenity” (Marita Bullock and Nicole Moore: Banned In Australia, A Bibliography).
His 1961 novel, Escape to Berkshire, was a change in style, being a post-nuclear war survival novel about the destruction of, and escape from, London.
Publications
- Rowena Goes Too Far, London, Jarrolds, 1931
- A Tale of Two Murders, London, Jarrolds, 1932 (published as Mortmain in the USA)
- Land of Short Shadows, 1932/33
- Jungle Leech, 1935
- Escape to Berkshire, 1961, London, Pall Mall Press