Peter de Polnay

Peter de Polnay (Hungarian: Polnay Péter) was a Hungarian-born English novelist and non-fiction writer who wrote over 80 books.

Although de Polnay began his first novel on a bet, writing soon became his profession and main source of income. He wrote at a feverish pace, completing forty novels in just forty-five years. After the war, he settled into a fairly predictable pattern of finishing one book in time for the summer holidays and another just ahead of the Christmas season.

De Polnay wrote under at least two pseudonyms. Between 1961 and 1966, W. H. Allen & Co. published three novels using the pseudonym [Rodney Garland](https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL14002035A/), which had been used by the Hungarian emigre writer Adam Martin de Hegedus for two novels with homosexual subject matter: The Heart in Exile (1953) and The Troubled Midnight (1956). After de Hegedus's death in October 1955, de Polnay wrote World Without Dreams (1961), Hell and High Water (1963), and Sorcerer's Broth (1966). W. H. Allen & Co. also published six novels that de Polnay wrote using the pseudonym Jessamy Morrison: The No-Road (1963); The Wind Has Two Edges (1964); The Girl from Paris (1965); Rusty (1966); The Office Party (1967); and The Widow (1972). Most of the Morrison novels dealt with lesbian and homosexual themes and de Polnay may have used the pseudonym to avoid problems with the Catholic Church.