Who Is the Founder of the Bestselling American Detective Novel?

You might be surprised to learn that it was Anna Katharine Green, whose 1878 book, The Leavenworth Case, burst on the scene to great success as the first American detective novel. (Note: Edgar Allen Poe is the writer of the first American detective story, not novel.) To access a free ebook of The Leavenworth Case, check out this link.

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Leavenworth_Case.html?id=sr5EAAAAYAAJ

The Leavenworth Case was also the first detective novel penned by a woman and the first American bestseller. The novel sold three-quarters of a million copies, which was unheard of in its day. Green’s impact as an author was so great at the time she published this novel that Arthur Conan Doyle sought her out as a fan of her work during his 1894 visit to the United States.  Wilkie Collins was another fan of hers, as well.

Green was born the daughter of a successful Brooklyn lawyer, to whom she turned for expertise on legal and police matters. The Leavenworth Case was so accurately researched that it was used in Yale University law classes as an example of the perils of trusting circumstantial evidence. College educated in a time when such education was difficult to come by for a woman, she started out writing poetry, even corresponding with Ralph Waldo Emerson about her ambitions, before switching to the novel, in which genre she would create a new field and a successful career.

Although Green raised a family and took on the responsibilities of the traditional mother and homemaker of the nineteenth century, her position as the family breadwinner and pressure from her ne’er-do-well wastrel of a husband to bring in ever larger amounts of money led her to publish more than 40 books over the next 45 years. Her first book, The Leavenworth Case, remained her most successful book, however.

In the late twentieth century, Agatha Christie spoke about the influence of Anna Katharine Green on her own decision to write detective novels and on her work. Green’s main character was detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force, but in several novels he was assisted by the nosy society spinster, Amelia Butterworth, inspiration for Miss Marple, and the debutante, Violet Strange, who had a secret life as an investigator, the prototype for many girl detective protagonists.  If you read The Leavenworth Case today, you will find it still a solidly plotted and well-written example of the genre that Anna Katharine Green founded.