Editing Dornford Yates (section)

==Writings==

{{main|List of works by Dornford Yates}}

Mercer originally wrote short stories for the monthly magazines. His first known published work, ''Temporary Insanity'', appeared in ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' in May 1910 – this is the first known occasion of his use of his pen name –  and his second, ''Like A Tale That is Told'' appeared in the ''[[The Harmsworth Red Magazine|Red Magazine]]'' in July 1910. The first known 'Berry' story to be published, ''Babes in the Wood'', appeared in ''[[Pearson's Magazine]]'' in September 1910. None of these early stories was ever included in his books. Many of his works began as stories in ''[[Windsor Magazine|The Windsor Magazine]]'', before being collected in book form by the ''Windsor''<nowiki/>'s publishers, [[Ward Lock & Co|Ward Lock]]. Between September 1911 and September 1939 he had 123 stories published in the ''Windsor'', and after it closed, the ''[[Strand Magazine]]'' carried three of his stories in 1940 and 1941. Four of his novels were serialised in ''[[Woman's Journal (British magazine)|Woman's Journal]]'' between 1933 and 1938. In the United States four of his novels were serialized in ''[[Woman's Home Companion]]'' between 1933 and 1939, while others appeared in ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]'' and ''[[Blue Book (magazine)|Blue Book]]''.

His first story for ''The'' ''Windsor Magazine'' was "Busy Bees", in September 1911, and this and fourteen subsequent stories from that publication up to the July 1914 issue were republished in book form as ''[[The Brother of Daphne]]'', in 1914. Some of the stories were edited for the book, to eliminate events, such as marriage, for the leading characters – which suggests that, originally, he had not planned on using the same characters for a story series. The narrator – later identified as "Boy Pleydell" – marries in "Babes in the Wood" and possibly in "Busy Bees", which became chapter VIII "The Busy Beers" in ''The Brother of Daphne'', with the end of the story altered to remove the hint of marriage.

His second book, ''[[The Courts of Idleness]]'', was published in 1920, containing material written before, during, and after the Great War. It was divided into three sections. In Book I Yates introduced a new set of characters similar to, but separate from, ''Berry & Co'', in four stories that had appeared in the ''Windsor'' between December 1914 and March 1915, and a final story from the ''Windsor'' of June 1919 in which the male characters have their story lines resolved in [[Macedonian front (World War I)|Salonika]], during the Great War. The Interlude has a story entitled "And The Other Left", from the November 1914 ''Windsor'', which is set on the Western Front with a unique set of characters. Book II returns to the 'Berry' characters, with two pre-war stories from the August and September 1914 ''Windsor'', and three post-war stories from the issues of July, August and September 1919. The book's final story, "Nemesis", was written for, but rejected by, ''Punch''; subsequently, it appeared in the ''Windsor'' in November 1919, with the main character named "Jeremy"; for the book he became "Berry". "Nemesis" was written to the ''Punch'' length, and so is much shorter than most of the other stories in ''The Courts of Idleness''.

The Berry books are semi-autobiographical, humorous romances, often in short story form, and, in particular, feature Bertram "Berry" Pleydell ("of White Ladies, in the County of Hampshire") and his family – his wife and cousin, Daphne, her brother, Boy Pleydell (the narrator), and their cousins Jonathan "Jonah" Mansel, and his sister, Jill. Collectively, they are "Berry & Co." Although all five appear in "Babes in the Wood", their precise relationships there are unstated, and Berry and Daphne are referred to as second cousins as late as ''[[Jonah and Co.|Jonah & Co]]''; later stories feature a simple family tree, showing them to be first cousins descended from two brothers and a sister.

"Berry & Co." capture the English upper classes of the [[Edwardian era]], still self-assured, but affected by changing social attitudes and the decline of their fortunes. As in many of Yates' books, grand houses, powerful motor cars, and foreign travel feature prominently in the 'Berry' stories. In the 1950s, C.W. Mercer wrote two books of fictionalized memoirs, ''[[As Berry and I Were Saying]]'' and ''[[B-Berry and I Look Back]]'', written as conversations between Berry and his family. They contain many anecdotes about his experiences as a lawyer, but are, in the main, an elegy for a past upper-class way of life.

The 'Chandos' books, starting with ''[[Blind Corner (novel)|Blind Corner]]'', in 1927, marked a change in style and content, being [[Thriller (genre)|thrillers]] set mainly in [[Continental Europe]] (often in [[Carinthia (state)|Carinthia]], Austria), wherein the hero–narrator, Richard Chandos, and colleagues, including George Hanbury and Jonathan Mansel (who also featured in the 'Berry' books), tackle criminals, protect the innocent, woo beautiful ladies, and hunt for treasure. These were originally published by [[Hodder and Stoughton]] although later they were re-issued by Ward Lock. It is the 'Chandos' novels to which [[Alan Bennett]] especially refers in naming Dornford Yates in the play ''[[Forty Years On (play)|Forty Years On]]'' (1972): "Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature." Yates also wrote other thrillers in the same style, but with different characters.

Besides these two genres, some of Yates' novels do not easily fall into either the humorous or the thriller category.

''[[Anthony Lyveden]]'' was Dornford Yates's first novel, telling the story of an impoverished ex-officer. Originally, it was published in monthly instalments in ''The'' ''Windsor Magazine'',

''[[Valerie French (novel)|Valerie French]]'', the sequel to ''Anthony Lyveden'' features mostly the same cast. At the start of the book Lyveden is suffering [[retrograde amnesia|amnesia]], and cannot recall the events of the previous book, leading to romantic complications.

''[[The Stolen March]]'' is a fantasy set in a lost realm, between Spain and France, where travellers encounter characters from nursery rhymes and fairy tales. A planned sequel, ''The Tempered Wind'', is referred to in the quasi-autobiography, ''B-Berry and I Look Back'', where Yates mentions abandoning the book as it failed to "take charge".

''[[This Publican]]'' features a scheming woman and her hen-pecked husband. Some critics have suggested that the portrayal of the villainess represented a thinly-veiled attack on Mercer's first wife, although that could imply that the husband was a self-portrait, and as Smithers' states, "...he would hardly have held himself out in a character so feeble and flaccid."<ref name="Smithers, A.J. 1982"/>

''[[Lower than Vermin]]'' is a novel in which the author defends his views on social class, and criticises the path Britain was following under the [[Attlee ministry|post-war Labour government]]; the title derives from a description of members of the [[Conservative_Party_(UK)|Conservative Party]] given in a 1948 speech by [[Labour_Party_(UK)#Attlee_government_(1945–1951)|Labour Party]] [[Member_of_Parliament_(United_Kingdom)|MP]] and [[Attlee_ministry#Leaders|government minister]] [[Aneurin_Bevan#Housing_reform|Aneurin Bevan]].

''[[Ne'er-Do-Well]]'' is a murder story narrated by Richard Chandos, with whom the investigating detective is staying.

''[[Wife Apparent]]'' was Yates's last novel, set in 1956.