Painting by Henry L. Gates (1927)
Sample of authors
Doyle, Arthur Conan
Scottish author with Irish ancestry, born in Edinburgh. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, worked as a civil servant, but was also a painter and illustrator. He was sickly, become seriously alcoholic over the years and was admitted into psychiatric care in 1885. He died in 1893. It was Arthur’s mother, Mary, born Foley, who instead held the family together, struggling to give her son a good e...
Literary figures
Sam Spade
Gender: Male
Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel and a few short stories about the American private detective Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon, however, is a major classic and like some of his short stories it is the precursor of the hardboiled detective story. The cynical, tough and outright rude Spade and his personal habits are so often copied that they have become clichés.