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Portrait image of A.E.W. Mason

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Mason, A.E.W.

Alfred Edward Woodley Mason was a British author born in London. He attended Dulwich College and Trinity College, Oxford, graduating with a degree in literature in 1888. He engaged in amateur dramatics at university and also wrote his own plays. After graduating, he unsuccessfully tried the stage. Encouraged by his friend Oscar Wilde he turned to fiction instead, and successfully published an...

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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.

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Literary figures

Adam Dalgliesh

Gender: Male

Adam Dalgliesh is a successful, much respected detective inspector and poet that features in novels by P.D. James. In her first book about him, she spelt his name Dalgleish, which has caused some confusion. He is a typical soft-spoken, straightforward, pragmatic English gentleman who operates more like a classic private detective than a Scotland Yard DI. He conducts himself with ease in all...

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