Margaret Rivers Tragett (née Larminie) was a former English badminton player. She competed in the All England Championships from 1902 until 1933 and was the winner of eleven titles. She gained fifteen caps for England and was also editor of the 'Gazette' a popular badminton publication.[1]
After marrying Robert Tragett in 1911 she competed under her married name of Margaret Tragett.[2]
Publishing using her maiden name Margaret Rivers Larminie,[4] Tragett wrote a series of generally well-reviewed novels, a badminton instruction manual, and a volume of poetry with her sister Vera Larminie. On Tragett's 1925 novel, Soames Green, a chronicle of a country solicitor's family, the Sheffield Daily Telegraph's reviewer said: 'Miss Larminie is undoubtedly a Master - or should it be Mistress - of language,' although they did not consider the plot to match her skill.[5] Tragett's 1928 novel Galatea was about the consequences of a woman named Emmeline winning an enormous amount of money in a sweepstakes, which Country Life described as ' a really distinguished and utterly charming story.'[6]The Sketch's reviewer Alan Kemp also found Galatea agreeable but described Tragett as a 'workmanlike' novelist.[7] Tragett's 1933 novel Doctor Sam, about a man who marries a widowed mother and becomes a good stepfather, was reviewed positively in the Western Mail: 'Miss Larminie scorns affectation and, therefore, writes with superlative ease. She is so charmingly natural that one feels her dialogue could not be otherwise than what it is.'[8] Tragett's last novel, Gory Knight, was a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers' 1935 novel Gaudy Night.[9]
