Joan Coggin

Joan Coggin
Born	(1898-07-22)22 July 1898 Lemsford, Hertfordshire, England
Died	11 August 1980(1980-08-11) (aged 82) Eastbourne, East Sussex, England
Pen name	Joanna Lloyd
Occupation	Novelist
Genre	Murder mystery detective story crime fiction thriller
Literary movement	Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Joan Coggin (22 July 1898 – 11 August 1980) was a British crime writer during the golden age of detective fiction. She also wrote children's novels under the pseudonym Joanna Lloyd.

Early life

Coggin was born in Lemsford, Hertfordshire in 1898, the daughter of the Revd Frederick Ernest Coggin (1859–1947) and his wife Clara (née Lloyd) (1866–1906); Clara Lloyd was the daughter of the publisher Edward Lloyd. At the time of her birth, her father was Vicar of Lemsford (1891–1905); his successor, the Revd A.E. Ward (1905–1920), was the father of the society osteopath, Stephen Ward.

Joan Coggin was one of four children. Her siblings were:

• Maurice Edward Henry, who married Eleanora Illeris, a member of the SOE during WWII. Their daughter Janet Coggin was a novelist, and the first wife of the KGB spy Dieter Gerhardt.
• (Frederick) Leslie, who was a schoolmaster: in 1937 he travelled to Moscow to learn Russian and thereby set up the Russian department at Marlborough College. He married Elaine Wood, the headmistress of the Geelong C of E Girls' Grammar School, The Hermitage in the 1960s.
• Enid, who married another clergyman, Geoffrey Hilder.

Immediately prior to her mother's early death, Coggin's father retired to Eastbourne; on her death he was left the large sum of £54,871 (worth £4m in 2017). Apart from her schooling, Coggin lived the rest of her life in Eastbourne.

Coggin attended Wycombe Abbey School from 1911 to 1916, and was then a ward nurse at the De Walden Court Military Hospital in Eastbourne during the remainder of the First World War.

Literary career

Her crime novels featured Lady Lupin Lorimer Hastings, a clergyman's wife, as her detective. She also wrote children's novels under a pseudonym.

List of works

Coggin's first novel was And Why Not Knowing (1929).

Crime novels

• Who Killed the Curate? (1944). Republished 2023.
• The Mystery at Orchard House (1944). Republished 2003.
• Penelope Passes or Why Did She Die? (1947). Republished 2003.
• Dancing with Death (1947). Republished 2022.

Children's novels

She also wrote children's novels as Joanna Lloyd.

• Betty of Turner House (1935).
• Girls’ Adventure Book (1935).

Most of her children's novels were in a series called Bramber Manor.

• Catherine Goes to School (1945).
• Jane Runs Away from School (1946).
• Catherine, Head of the House (1947).
• Audrey, A New Girl (1948).
• Three New Girls (1949).

Personal life

Coggin was unmarried; she died in 1980. She died at Southfields Nursing Home in Eastbourne. Her funeral was a requiem mass at St Michael and All Angels in Eastbourne and she was buried at Ocklynge Cemetery.