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Post-Civil War detective fiction, written mostly by women, considered in relation to other forms of sentimental and domestic fiction.
This Companion examines the range of American crime fiction from execution sermons of the Colonial era to television programmes like The Sopranos.
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DIVTwo 19th century mysteries by one of the founding mothers of the genre./div
Anna Katharine Green was the most famous and prolific writer of detective fiction in the United States prior to Dashiell Hammett. Her first novel, The Leavenworth Case, was the bestseller of 1878. Green is credited with a number of “firsts” within the mystery genre, including the gentleman murdered as he makes out his will and the icicle as murder weapon. She created the first female detectives in American fiction. Her amateur spinster sleuth, Amelia Butterworth, became the prototype for numerous women detectives to follow, including Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Nosy, opinionated, and tenacious, Amelia Butterworth engages in a sustained rivalry with Ebenezer Gryce, a police detective. In the interaction between these characters, Green developed two more conventions adopted by future generations of mystery writers: the investigation as battle between the sexes and between the professional and the unexpectedly sharp, observant amateur. This volume presents two of Green’s Amelia Butterworth tales: That Affair Next Door (1897) and Lost Man’s Lane (1898).
Arthur Conan Doyle has long been considered the greatest writer of crime fiction, and the gender bias of the genre has foregrounded William Godwin, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Emile Gaboriau and Fergus Hume. But earlier and significant contributions were being made by women in Britain, the United States and Australia between 1860 and 1880, a period that was central to the development of the genre. This work focuses on women writers of this genre and these years, including Catherine Crowe, Caroline Clive, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Louisa May Alcott, Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, Anna Katharine Green, Celeste de Chabrillan, "Oline Keese" (Caroline Woolmer Leakey), Eliza Winstanley, Ellen Davitt, and Mary Helena Fortune--innovators who set a high standard for women writers to follow.
Cormac McCarthy both embodies and redefines the notion of the artist as outsider. His fiction draws on recognizable American themes and employs dense philosophical and theological subtexts, challenging readers by depicting the familiar as inscrutably foreign. The essays in this Companion offer a sophisticated yet concise introduction to McCarthy's difficult and provocative work. The contributors, an international team of McCarthy scholars, analyze some of the most well-known and commonly taught novels - Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses and The Road - while providing detailed treatments of McCarthy's work in cinema, including the many adaptations of his novels to film. Designed for scholars, teachers and general readers, and complete with a chronology and bibliography for further reading, this Companion is an essential reference for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of one of America's most celebrated living novelists.
A new edition of this standard work, fully updated with four brand new chapters.
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) is among the most popular, acclaimed and controversial of writers in English. His books have sold in great numbers, and he remains the youngest writer to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many associate Kipling with poems such as 'If–', his novel Kim, his pioneering use of the short story form and such works for children as the Just So Stories. For others, though, Kipling is the very symbol of the British Empire and a belligerent approach to other peoples and races. This Companion explores Kipling's main themes and texts, the different genres in which he worked and the various phases of his career. It also examines the 'afterlives' of his texts in postcolonial writing and through adaptations of his work. With a chronology and guide to further reading, this book serves as a useful introduction for students of literature and of Empire and its after effects.
A comprehensive 2011 guide to the genres, historical contexts, cultural diversity and major authors of American fiction since the Second World War.