Meny

Anniversaries, 1 November

Arthur Morrison

Arthur Morrison was one of Britain's best-known authors around the turn of the last century on account of his realistic portrayals of London's East End and his stories about the private detective Martin Hewitt.
Morrison was born in Poplar, a working-class district in London's East End. His father was an engine fitter. Morrison was ashamed of his background, and he later invented details about his childhood and parents. As a result, little is known about his early life except that he did...

Further reading

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

Marcus Didius Falco

Gender: Male

Former Roman soldier who, after having fought in Britannia, settles in Rome as a ‘private informer’ at the end of the 1st century A.D. He marries Helena Justina, a senator’s daughter, and they build a family. In Lindsey Davis’ last (?) novel about him, he seems to die, but there is some uncertainty about that. His role as a problem-solver is then taken over by his adoptive daughter Flavia Albia.

Further reading