Who was the first Woman Detective Writer?
The first WOMAN DETECTIVE WRITER was a Mrs. Fortune, an Australian widow obliged to support herself by the pen, whose volume of short stories The Detective’s Album: Recollections of an Australian Police Officer was published under the pseudonym W.W. at Melbourne in 1871. First to have a full-length detective novel published was Anna Katherine Green of Buffalo, New York, whose rotund and rheumatic detective Ebenezer Gryce made his debut in The Leavenworth Case in 1878. This was also the first detective novel by an American writer of either sex. Miss Green, the wife of a furniture-manufacturer, explained her invasion of this male world by saying that she considered the writing of a detective novel to be a suitable preparation for a career as a poetess. The story concerned the death of a millionaire and had as its principal characters two very attractive female cousins who, with sighs and heaving bosoms, uttered such deathless lines as ‘My reputation is sullied forever’ and ‘The finger of suspicion never forgets the direction in which it has once pointed’. Miss Green nevertheless understood her craft and the culprit proved to be one of the least suspected characters. By the time of her death in her 90th year in 1935 she had written over 30 detective novels.
