Meny

Theme article

History of crime fiction

By: Johan Wopenka

Depending upon how one wishes to define the concept ‘crime fiction’, it is possible to trace its history and roots back in time. When Dorothy L. Sayers compiled her comprehensive three-volume anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928–34) she started with two stories from the Old Testament, and when Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (alias Ellery Queen) wrote their fundamental The Detective Short Story : A Bibliography (1942), they listed eight Chinese collections of short stories which are believed to have been written down between 600 A.D. and 1800 A.D., some of them containing stories based on an older, oral tradition.

Further reading

Literary figure

Harriet Unwin

Gender: Female

She grew up in a children’s home in Victorian England and was forced to work hard. But the young Harriet Unwin struggles stubbornly until she gets a job as a maid and later as a governess. She also becomes unwillingly involved in some murder cases, described by Evelyn Hervey (pseudonym for H.R.F. Keating), which she solves by methods including pretending to be a detective and a journalist.

Further reading