Maps in mystery fiction.

As The Map Room blog points out, an article by Axel Bax et al. (Cornell University) in Computational Humanities Research 2025 that takes a deep dive into the presence of maps in fiction indicates—probably to no surprise of mystery fans—that "small-scale maps often were in the detective/mystery genre." 

Map from Anna Katharine Green's Lost Man's Lane (1899)

Collected Letters of Wilkie Collins now available online.

Wilkie Collins

The Wilkie Collins Society has made available online The Collected Letters of Wilkie Collins, complete with annotations. Among the fascinating content:

• Prosecutor Nathaniel C. Moak used plot points from Collins' The Moonstone as part of his argument in court (he was unsuccessful; letter of 21 Aug 1883, ref. no. 3110).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anna Katharine Green

• Collins' praise of Anna Katharine Green to publisher George Haven Putnam (1883, ref. no. 2245): "Have I read 'The Leavenworth Case'? I have read it through at one sitting. Need I say after that what I think of it? Yes—because I have a word to add about Miss Green's future work. Her powers of invention are so remarkable—she has so much imagination and so much belief (a most important qualification for our art) in what she writes, that I have nothing to report of myself, so far, of most sincere admiration. ...."

Preserving the home of Anna Katharine Green.

Anna Katharine Green. NYPL.

The Friends of the Rohlfs' House (affiliated with the 501-c-3 Allentown Association) is working to acquire the Buffalo, NY, Craftsman home of pioneering mystery author Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) and her husband, famed furniture designer Charles Rohlfs (1853–1936), and turn it into a house museum. The group has been purchasing pieces that were originally in the house. This post about the group's latest acquisition (a rocking chair) lists contact details for contributions.

Charles Rohlfs.

A glimpse of Anna Katharine Green.

Anna Katharine Green, n.d. NYPL.

On her website, writer Patricia Meredith provides a 21 July 1889 Daily Inter Ocean article by Mary Hatch, "An American Gaboriau," that provides an interesting personal look at pioneering American mystery author Anna Katharine Green (The Leavenworth Case, etc.). Hatch, a cousin of Green's sister-in-law, had a warm friendship with Green, and as Green was not fond of being interviewed, Hatch's insights are valuable. Hatch calls Green "a tall, graceful girl" who "learned the art of expressing herself with grace, accuracy, and poetic finish."

Anna Katharine Green: NYS Writers Hall of Fame inductee.

On June 8, mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Watch the video of the virtual festivities below; the Green portion begins approximately at 1 hour 2 seconds, with a presentation by my co-nominator Clare Meldrum on Green's life and work, followed by an appearance by Rebecca Crozier, Green's great-great granddaughter. Crozier tells an interesting anecdote about Green's reputed response to being barred from a courtroom. 

Want to read works by Green?

• Reprint of That Affair Next Door and Lost Man's Lane
  
  
• Works in the Villanova Digital Library such as The Doctor, His Wife and the Clock and Three Women and a Mystery
  

Addl funding for online dime novel project.

Villanova's Falvey Memorial Library announced that it has received a nearly $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue digitizing dime novels in partnership with Northern Illinois University (Nickels and Dimes collection, which offers research opportunities), Bowling Green State University, Oberlin, and Stanford. Comments by Falvey's Demian Katz indicate that the concentration will be on works issued by Street & Smith, a major dime novel publisher.

The project has provided many valuable mystery-related works, including those by female authors such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Anna Katharine Green, and Metta Fuller Victor (aka Seeley Regester).

Illustration from The Figure Eight (1869), by Seeley Regester
(aka Metta Fuller Victor). NIU Nickels and Dimes Collection

Update: Anna Katharine Green induction into New York State Writers Hall of Fame.

New edition of Anna Katharine Green's
That Affair Next Door (1897) coming
soon from Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks

I've been advised by the Empire State Center for the Book, which hosts the NYS Writers Hall of Fame, that the ceremony at the Princeton Club for the 2020 inductees (including mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green) has been moved to September 14.

Here's my original post on the subject.

Update, 5-26-20. I've been advised that the induction is being moved to June 7, 2021.

Anna Katharine Green: Upcoming inductee, NYS Writers Hall of Fame.

Anna Katharine Green. NYPL

On June 2, mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) will be inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame (see the announcement video on the Empire State Center for the Book's Facebook page). This is the happy result of a nomination submitted by my Clues colleague, Claire Meldrum of Canada's Sheridan College (who is writing a biography of Green), and me. Author of the landmark mystery novel The Leavenworth Case (1878) and numerous other mystery works as well as a champion of the writing profession, the Brooklyn-born Green was a longtime resident of Buffalo, along with her husband, Charles Rohlfs (a well-respected Arts and Crafts furniture designer), and her three children.

The induction dinner will be held at the Princeton Club in New York,  and Rebecca Crozier, a great-great granddaughter of Green, is expected to attend. I will be there as well.

More on the 2020 inductees

Update, 3-26-20. The induction dinner has been moved to September 14.

Update, 5-26-20. I've been advised that the induction is being moved to June 7, 2021. 

Peer reception of Anna Katharine Green.

Anna Katharine Green. NYPL

Amid the very busy Popular Culture Association conference of last week (see my Twitter feed), I had a chat with Clues contributor Claire Meldrum (Sheridan College, Canada). Meldrum is working on a biography of Anna Katharine Green (listen to her talk about Green on Vermont Public Radio). She is interested in hearing from anyone who has come across mentions of Green and her work by fellow writers (Green did meet Arthur Conan Doyle during one of his lecture tours). Contact Meldrum here.

Green's The Step on the Stair enters the public domain.

House diagram from The Step on the Stair

The Tisch Library of Tufts University notes that one of the books that entered the public domain on 1 January 2019 is The Step on the Stair by Anna Katharine Green, which involves the murder of a wealthy man and a hidden will. "Admirable craftsmanship," deemed the World's News of Sydney, Australia.

CFP for essay collection on the cozy.

La Salle University's Phyllis Betz (Katherine V. Forrest: A Critical Appreciation; Lesbian Detective Fiction: Woman as Author, Subject and Reader) plans to compile a collection of essays on the cozy mystery. Prospective topics/approaches of interest include the following:

• Discussion of authors, including precursors such as Mary Roberts Rinehart, Anna Katharine Green, and Agatha Christie

• Settings
  
• Main characters, including their careers
  
• Other characters
  
• Themes
  
• Subgenres such as the gothic cozy and cozy noir
  
• Problems, including the definition of the cozy and those authors who can be defined as cozy writers
  
• Narrative strategies

Have questions or seek further information? Contact Betz.

Clues 36.1: Christie, Conan Doyle, Green, Hammett, Ray, Silva, and more.

Clues 36.1 (2018) has been published; order the issue from McFarland. Abstracts are listed below.

Updates, 3-24-18 and 6-16-18. The issue is now available on Google Play, Nook., and Kindle.

Introduction Janice M. Allan (University of Salford)
 

E Pluribus Unum: A Transnational Reading of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express

Stewart King (Monash University)

This article questions both the Englishness and generic stasis ascribed to Agatha Christie and argues that her Murder on the Orient Express (1933) displays an inherent transnationalism that questions the strict taxonomies supposedly separating the English clue-puzzle from the American private-eye novel.

Psychogeography and the Detective: Re-evaluating the Significance of Space in Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced

Sarah Martin (University of Chester)

The author discusses the nature of the village space and its influential role in plot, character, and structure of Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced. The concept of psychogeography unearths the true nature of space and its influence on the construction and preservation of social identity in the book.

Do We Know His Methods? Ratiocination in the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle

Jackie Shead

This article discusses Arthur Conan Doyle’s explanation of Sherlock Holmes’s methods, contrasting them with his presentation of the detective in action. It explores contradictions in the Holmes stories, suggesting Conan Doyle’s investment in a hyperrational sleuth is at odds with his intuitive understanding of detective methodology.

Paretsky on Green and more.

The winter 2018 issue of the University of Chicago Magazine features "Criminal Mastermind," an article on alumnus Sara Paretsky, in which she talks about her role in the mystery world as "the aging diva," the work of Anna Katharine Green, and her experiences as a student at the university. Says Paretsky, "Crime fiction is the place in literature where law and justice in society come together."

The first hundred years of detective fiction.

Illustration from Lawrence L.
Lynch, Dangerous Ground (1885)

A valuable resource is the Lilly Library of Indiana University's online version of its 1973 exhibition "The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction, 1841–1941," which provides a useful history of the genre through the works selected. Besides the expected items by Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle, there are works by lesser known authors such as William Russell (the rare Recollections of a Detective Police Officer, 1856–59) and Lawrence L. Lynch (pseudonym of Emma Murdock Van Deventer, 1885). Other goodies include G. K. Chesterton's sketch of Holmes and Moriarty for a never published version of Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem," a manuscript page from S. S. Van Dine's The Scarab Murder Case (1930), and Georges Simenon's first two novels. Note that the statement "It was not until eleven years later, in 1878, that the first native detective novel appeared in America, Anna Katherine [sic] Green's The Leavenworth Case" is not true, as Metta Fuller Victor is now given this distinction for her novel The Dead Letter (1866).

Anna Katharine Green'sThree Thousand Dollars (1910).

Anna Katharine Green, from
The Reader (June 1907)

The tumblr site of the Digital Public Library has posted a cover of Anna Katharine Green's Three Thousand Dollars (1910) as an example of early-20th-century book cover design. The book is about, according to the Woman's Home Companion that serialized it, "the romantic adventures of a beautiful girl and the problem of a secret safe."

Coming Soon: Crime and Detective Fiction

Crime and Detective Fiction, part of the Salem Press series Critical Insights, is scheduled for release in April. I wrote an essay for this volume—"'Your Sin Will Find You Out': Critical Perceptions of Mystery Fiction"—which examines the response to Anna Katharine Green's The Leavenworth Case, James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke, and Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Per-Cent Solution. Another essay, written by Kerstin Bergman (Lund University), is on Stieg Larsson's work. The editor of the volume is Rebecca Martin (Pace University).

Mystery reading by Justice Holmes and friends.

He had just discovered [E. Phillips] Oppenheim and had been revelling in the world of international intrigue into which Oppenheim had transplanted him.

—1932 research material on Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. by Mark DeWolfe Howe

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,
ca. 1924. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Div.

Justice Sonia Sotomayer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fondness for Nancy Drew has precedence on the Supreme Court. Harvard Law School Library's impressive digital project on Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. sheds further light on his mystery reading (Holmes once confessed his "ignoble liking" for detective stories to British jurist Sir Frederick Pollock). In one letter, he states, "I like what I have read of John Dickson Carr—(author of The Lost Gallows)" [1931]. An inventory of Holmes's library after his death in 1935 lists John Buchan's Greenmantle (1916) and The Three Hostages (1924), Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929), Oppenheim's A Prince of Sinners (1903) and Prodigals of Monte Carlo (1926), Dorothy L. Sayers's Have His Carcase (1932), and Edgar Wallace's The Man at the Carlton (1931). He also had a copy of Anna Katharine Green's The Leavenworth Case (1878, part of the Haycraft-Queen list of essential mysteries) with the following inscription by the author: "To Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes with birthday congratulations from Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs. Buffalo, March, 1926."

Some of Holmes's friends were equally enthusiastic about mysteries. In one letter, his British Marxist-socialist friend Harold Laski notes Freeman Wills Crofts's Inspector French's Greatest Case (1925), "which I commend warmly to you if it comes your way" and later urges Holmes to read Crofts's The Cask (1920; both books are on the Haycraft-Queen list). In another letter, Laski expresses appreciation for Mary Davies and the Manor of Ebury by Charles T. Gatty; in yet another letter, he recommends Philip MacDonald's The White Crow (1928) and The Rasp (1924; the latter is on the Haycraft-Queen list).

Pollock sent Holmes a list of his recommended detective stories, with a note by the names of Sayers and Agatha Christie that stated, "anything by either of these writers may be presumed to be good." Pollock's list included Margery Allingham, G. D. H. Cole, R. Austin Freeman, Ronald A. Knox, Anthony Rolls, Henry Wade, and Victor L. Whitechurch. It appears that Holmes did not need Pollock's prompting regarding Christie, as evidenced by the following passage from Some Table Talk of Mr. Justice Holmes and the Mrs. (1935): "Mrs. Agatha Christie may be pleased some day to know that at this moment [May 1933] she was sharing his attention and his praise with Aristotle."

Nominating mystery authors for halls of fame.

Consider nominating distinguished mystery authors for halls of fame that exist throughout the country. Quite often, genre writers are overlooked for these honors or are nominated for some other achievement (e.g., Celestine Sibley was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame for her journalism rather than her mysteries; Mildred Wirt Benson is a member of the U Iowa School of Journalism Hall of Fame for her reporting credentials, although her Nancy Drew novels are mentioned).

To be considered for nomination, writers usually need some connection to the particular state (e.g., birth or a minimum term of residence) and a body of work.

Anna Katharine Green.
NYPL

Links to halls of fame appear below. I have nominated police procedural pioneer Ed McBain/Evan Hunter and important early mystery author Anna Katharine Green for the New York State Writers Hall of Fame and, for New Jersey's hall of fame, Ho-ho-kus's Metta Fuller Victor (author of The Dead Letter [1866], the first American detective novel).

State Halls of Fame Devoted to Writers

East Tennessee. It appears the next nominations process will open in June 2013.

Georgia. Current nominees include Mignon Ballard and Virginia Lanier.

Minnesota. Nominated writers must have links to Minnesota, either through birth or residence in the state while producing a body of work. A good candidate for nomination would be Haycraft-Queen lister Mabel Seeley.

Missouri. 2012 Quill Award inductee is Ridley Pearson.

Nevada.

New York. In addition to my nominations of Hunter and Green (mentioned above), another appropriate nominee would be Brewster's Rex Stout—something that the Wolfe Pack should back.

North Carolina. Elizabeth Daniels Squire was inducted in 2006 and Manly Wade Wellman in 1996.

Oklahoma. Jean Hager was inducted in 1992, Carolyn Hart in 1993, and William Bernhardt in 1997.

South Carolina. Does not appear to have a nominations process open to the public. Mickey Spillane was inducted in 2012.

Texas. Established by the Friends of the Fort Worth Public Library to recognize authors who have contributed to the literary heritage of Texas. Bill Crider was inducted in 2010.

Wisconsin Writers Wall of Fame. Sponsored by the Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library. August Derleth was inducted in 1997.

Other
Alabama Men's Hall of Fame.

Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.

Alaska Women's Hall of Fame. Deadline for nominations: November 1, 2012.

Arizona Women's Hall of Fame.

Quote of the day.

Anna Katharine Green,
NYPL

". . . detective story writing is a peculiar field."

—from a review of Anna Katharine Green's Agatha Webb, Brooklyn Daily Eagle 21 Aug 1899: 4.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Judith Lee (1912–16), by Richard Marsh.

I did not propose to sit still [...and] allow those three uncanny beings, undisturbed, to work their evil wills.
—Richard Marsh, "Conscience" (1913)

"He had me by the throat before I had
even realized that danger
threatened." Illustration from
"Mandragora" by Richard Marsh
Washington Herald 1 Mar. 1914

Judith Lee is a "teacher of the deaf and dumb"—in other words, she can read lips. This skill tends to embroil her in trouble. In "The Man Who Cut Off My Hair," Lee encounters jewel thieves; the reader might be annoyed that Lee is enraged by her unwanted haircut rather than the robbery of an elderly man. In "Conscience," Lee connects cryptic utterances with two murders and takes action to avoid further deaths. In "Matched," Lee looks into the case of a bride who has vanished. In "Auld Lang Syne" she thwarts a bombing. In "The Miracle," Lee prevents a prospective marriage based on fraud. In "Isolda," Lee steps in to flout a fraudulent fortuneteller. In "Uncle Jack" she bests an American con man. In "The Restaurant Napolitain," Lee confronts agents of the Mafia. In "Mandragora," she works to free an innocent man from prison.

Lee does not always act wisely (as in "The Restaurant Napolitain" when she faces the bad guy—alone—and tells him she knows he has murdered someone). In some respects, she may resemble Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange (The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange, 1915).

Richard Marsh (aka Richard Bernard Heldmann, 1857–1915) is best known for The Beetle, which outsold Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897. His grandson was the horror writer Robert Aickman (1914–81). Few copies of Judith Lee: Some Pages from Her Life (1912) and The Adventures of Judith Lee (1916) exist in U.S. libraries, and the sole copy of The Adventures of Judith Lee on abebooks is priced at more than $1200. I am hoping that Valancourt Books, which has been reprinting Marsh's works, will eventually get to Judith Lee.

Via the Library of Congress' Chronicling America project I downloaded 10 of the Washington Herald versions of the Judith Lee stories that are collected in Judith Lee: Some Pages from Her Life (unfortunately, "Was It Luck or Chance?" was not entirely legible). As an aid to those who may wish to read these stories, I have uploaded the readable copies to my Web site; the links on the story titles in this blog post will take readers to them.

Update, 1-22-16. There's a new edition of Judith Lee stories from Valancourt Books, edited by Minna Vuohelainen (Edge Hill University, UK)