Editing Ngaio Marsh (section)

==Personal life==
Marsh was unofficially engaged to Edward Bristed, who died in action in December 1917.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Harding |first1=Bruce |title=Ngaio Marsh: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction |date=2019 |publisher=McFarland |location=Jefferson, NC |isbn=978-0-7864-6032-8 |page=13 |url=https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/ngaio-marsh/ |access-date=15 July 2020}}</ref> She never married and had no children.<ref name="CR"/> She enjoyed close companionships with women, including her lifelong friend Sylvia Fox, but denied being lesbian, according to biographer [[Joanne Drayton]].<ref name="nzherald1"/>
"I think Ngaio Marsh wanted the freedom of being who she was in a world, especially in a New Zealand that was still very conformist in its judgments of what constituted 'decent jokers, good Sheilas, and 'weirdos'", Roy Vaughan wrote after meeting her on a P&O Liner.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://kiwicrime.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/memories-of-dame-encounter-with-ngaio.html |title=Crime Watch: Memories of a Dame: An encounter with Ngaio Marsh (guest post by author Roy Vaughan) |publisher=Kiwicrime.blogspot.co.uk |date=14 August 2010 |access-date=3 June 2015}}</ref> A detective novel,"Blue Blood" (1997),<ref>{{cite book |last=Eldred-Grigg |first=Stevan |author-link= |date=1997 |title=Blue Blood |url= |location=Christchurch |publisher=Penguin |page= |isbn=}}</ref> by [[Stevan Eldred-Grigg]] in a pastiche of her style, portrays her in a lesbian relationship.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.read-nz.org/writers-files/writer/eldred-grigg-stevan |quote=Blue Blood (1997) takes one of Canterbury's most famous daughters, Ngaio Marsh, in 1929, at the outset of her career and places her in a sordid pastiche detective story that exaggeratedly resembles her own later fictions. |title=Stevan Eldred Grigg, Canterbury - Waitaha |date=2024 |work=Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Writers File |access-date=27 March 2024 }}</ref>

In 1965, she published an autobiography, ''Black Beech and Honeydew''. British author and publisher Margaret Lewis wrote an authorized biography, ''Ngaio Marsh, A Life'' in 1991. New Zealand art historian Joanne Drayton's biography, ''Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime'' was published in 2008. Towards the end of her life she systematically destroyed many of her papers, letters, documents and handwritten manuscripts.<ref name="CR"/>

Marsh died in Christchurch and was buried at the Church of the Holy Innocents, Mount Peel.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>