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

Gervase Fen

Gender: Male

Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, as well as an amateur detective in a number of humorous crime stories by Edmund Crispin (pseudonym for Robert Bruce Montgomery). Gervase Fen is a middle-aged, jolly family father with wavy hair who enthusiastically deals with the criminal mysteries he happens to get involved in. By his side he often has the sensible Chief...

Further reading