Found! The grave of Australia's Mary Fortune.

Wildside Press edition of
stories by Mary Fortune

Lucy Sussex, who has recently published a book on Fergus Hume (author of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, 1886) and was instrumental in recovering the work of early Australian mystery writer Mary Fortune, has discovered Fortune's grave. Although Fortune wrote more than 500 detective stories in her lifetime, she is not the first female detective-story writer; New England's Harriet Prescott Spofford predates her with works such as "In a Cellar" and "Mr. Furbush."

Happy birthday, Harriet Prescott Spofford.

Harriet Prescott Spofford,
n.d. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Div.

Poet and writer Harriet Prescott Spofford was born today in Calais, ME, in 1835. A notable figure in mystery fiction for her stories "In a Cellar" (1859), "Mr. Furbush" (1865), and "In the Maguerriwock" (1868) in terms of the development of the professional detective and the mystery story, Spofford published her work in the major periodicals of her day such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazar, and Scribner's Monthly. Her career of more than 60 years also included works of supernatural fiction such as "The Black Bess" (1868), and Spofford's "Her Story" (1872) is considered to be an important precursor to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic feminist work "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892). She died in 1921. (Clues articles on Spofford here and here)

Lucy Sussex on 19C female writers and detectives.

Among the most popular posts on this blog are those dealing with early female detectives and women mystery writers. Lucy Sussex's Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction: The Mothers of the Mystery Genre (2010; foreword by Val McDermid) is a solid discussion of women's major contributions to the emerging genre. Sussex has done much to shed new light on often neglected female writers in the genre (most notably Irish-born Mary Helena Fortune), and she published an article in Clues 26.1 (2007) on Edward Bulwer Lytton's contributions to the mystery field that garnered praise from the Hon. Henry Lytton Cobbold (Bulwer Lytton's great-grandson). Both Fortune's and Bulwer Lytton's roles are well reflected in the book.

Sussex traces the cross-currents among the gothic, the Newgate novel, newspaper crime accounts, and the sensation genre that were integral to the establishment of detective fiction. Writers covered include Catherine Crowe, Ellen Davitt, Anna Katharine Green, Ann Radcliffe, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Fanny Trollope. There is some impressive literary sleuthing on Metta Fuller Victor (author of The Dead Letter, 1866) that significantly expands on my article in the Fall 2003 Mystery Scene ("Metta Fuller Victor: A Sensational Life"). Intriguing parallels are drawn between the work of Ellen Wood (East Lynne, etc.) and Agatha Christie as well as the surprising but plausible assertion that Mary Elizabeth Braddon created the first clerical sleuth ("George Caulfield's Journey," 1879). Readers also will like the timeline in the back of the book that traces true-crime milestones alongside ones in fiction (such as the first Newgate Calendar in 1728, the 1833 birth of Pinkerton agent Kate Warne, and the 1859 publication of Spofford's "In a Cellar"). All in all, this is an excellent resource for those who would like to learn more about women's contributions to the emerging mystery genre in the nineteenth century.

Westminster Detective Library: Help requested.

Harriet Prescott Spofford,
n.d. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Div.

The Westminster Detective Library, spearheaded by Edgar winner Leroy Lad Panek (Introduction to the Detective Story; The American Police Novel: A History; coeditor of Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology) and Mary Bendel-Simso of McDaniel College (MD), is a project to identify, catalog, digitize, and post online all short detective fiction printed in the United States before 1891. To date, the catalog holds more than 1000 titles drawn from periodicals such as the Bangor Whig and Courier, the Alta Californian, Harper’s, Galaxy, Putnam’s, the New York Ledger, Ballou’s Dollar Magazine, and other 19th-century magazines and story papers. The editors believe that there may be as many as 1000 titles yet to be discovered.  

Among the goodies currently online:

• "My Mysterious Neighbors" by Mrs. M[ary]. A[ndrews]. Denison (1858). Massachusetts-born author of the humorous (and successful) That Husband of Mine (1874); married to Charles Wheeler Denison, editor of the antislavery journal The Emancipator. "My blood curdled. Was I living day by day next to a murderer—to a brace of murderers?" 
 
 • Various pieces by Charles Dickens, including "Two 'Detective' Anecdotes" (1851)

• "The Trailor Murder Mystery" (1846) by Abraham Lincoln. "[T]he Postmaster at Springfield [IL] received a letter . . . stating that William [Trailor] had returned home without Fisher, and was saying, rather boastfully, that Fisher was dead, and had willed him his money, and that he had got about fifteen hundred dollars by it. The letter further stated that William’s story and conduct seemed strange..."

• "A Story of Circumstantial Evidence" (1834) by Daniel O'Connell.
"... the prisoner was called on for his defence.  He called—to the surprise of everyone—the murdered man."

• "In a Cellar" (Atlantic Monthly, 1859) by Maine-born Harriet Prescott Spofford. Important early detective story by a US female writer

Panek and Bendel-Simso hope to have at least 150 more pieces online before the fall. They also welcome comments, clues to finding additional stories, and volunteer editors to assist in all areas of the project. Contact the editor here.

Women and Social Movements database available this month.

To celebrate Women's History Month, the database Women and Social Movements in the United States is available online free of charge until the end of March. This resource has some 3600 documents.

Here are a few items of mystery interest that I found:

• Various items pertaining to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, great-niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe; best known for "The Yellow Wall-Paper," she also wrote one mystery novel, Unpunished

• Biographical sketch of Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs

• Biographical sketch of E. D. E. N. Southworth, author of The Hidden Hand (1859)

• Biographical sketch of Harriet Prescott Spofford, known in mysterydom for "In a Cellar" (1859) and "Mr. Furbush" (1865)

• Biographical sketch of Metta Fuller Victor, author of The Dead Letter (1866)

About the image: Author Harriet Prescott Spofford, n.d. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Clues 26.4 published

Vol. 26, no. 4 of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published. A list of the articles and reviews follows below; go here for the article abstracts, or here for more information about the journal.

Investigating Domestic Disorder: Harriet Prescott Spofford's Detectives Karen J. Jacobsen (Valdosta State U, Georgia) The "Test of Feminine Investigation" in Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly of Scotland Yard Stories Ellen Burton Harrington (U of South Alabama) Tijuana the American Town: Images of the Corrupt City in Hammett's "The Golden Horseshoe" J. A. Zumoff (City College of New York) Feline, not Canine: The Rise of the Female Arch-Villain in the 1940s Sherlock Holmes Films from Universal Amanda J. Field (U of Southampton, UK) The Phenomenology of Noir Perception: Dorothy B. Hughes's In a Lonely Place and Cornell Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man William Brevda (Central Michigan U) REVIEWS Mary W. Tannert and Henry Kratz, eds. and trans. Early German and Austrian Detective Fiction: An Anthology Gundela Hachmann David Geherin. Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction Rachel Schaffer

Clues moves to McFarland.

Clues: A Journal of Detection, the only U.S. academic journal on detective/mystery fiction (I am its managing editor), has moved to McFarland & Co. in Jefferson, North Carolina. Heldref Publications, the former owner, sold it as part of a general restructuring effort.

Clues is a good match for McFarland, which has a strong popular culture line, including mystery reference works (I am editing a new series, the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction, for the publisher). In addition, McFarland's existing relationships with distributors such as Ingram and Baker & Taylor should facilitate the ordering of Clues for bookstores, libraries, and others. Online access to individual articles and entire issues via Metapress will continue (Clues is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and by the Crime Fiction Canada Web site).

The editorial team for Clues remains in place, with the additions of assistant editor Vassilena Parashkevova (London South Bank University, UK) and book review editor Jim Mancall (Harvard University); Clues reviews nonfiction mystery materials and those that would be useful in the classroom. Executive editor Margaret Kinsman (London South Bank University, UK) and I are busy with upcoming issues. The first issue from McFarland (vol. 26, no. 1) is part 2 of an issue on Victorian crime fiction, guest edited by Janice M. Allan (University of Salford, UK) and featuring articles on British-born but New Zealand-raised novelist Fergus Hume; British writers Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Catherine Louisa Pirkis; and American author Harriet Prescott Spofford. It will be followed by an issue on Scottish crime fiction, guest edited by Gill Plain (University of St. Andrews, UK). We have just issued a call for papers for a theme issue on Chester Himes and his legacy, guest edited by Norlisha Crawford (University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh).

In addition: A gallery of Clues covers has been posted, and, thanks to the efforts of a small army of enthusiastic volunteers, article abstracts for the first 22 volumes of Clues are now online. The abstracts are highly educational: Where else could one learn that author-screenwriter Horace McCoy (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?) also wrote a gangster novel?

Margaret, the Clues editorial board, and I hope the mystery community will continue to support Clues as a vital avenue of information and scholarship on mystery fiction.

About the cover: Neve McIntosh as Lucy, Lady Audley, and Stephen Macintosh as Robert Audley in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, broadcast on PBS's Mystery! in 2000. Image courtesy of WGBH, Boston.