Monday, July 06, 2015

"The Criminal Neglect of Detective Fiction."

Marjorie Hope Nicolson.
From Smith College's
yearbook Class of 1930
In the 4 June 2015 Times Higher Education, University of Ulster English professor Richard Bradford wonders why academe treats crime fiction as "worthy of inspection but little respect." Some of the writers mentioned are W. H. Auden, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Patricia Highsmith, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edmund Wilson. He states that Smith College English professor Marjorie Hope Nicolson was the first to explore the relationship of academics to detective fiction in "The Professor and the Detective" (Atlantic Monthly, Apr 1929, 483–93), but notes that she was fairly dismissive in her piece.

2 comments:

Jerry House said...

Marjorie Hope Nicholson was better versed in science fiction than in detective fiction. Her pioneering work VOYAGES TO THE MOON (1949, based on a series of lectures at Toronto University) surveyed interplanetary adventure fiction up to 1784.

Elizabeth Foxwell said...

How interesting.