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Dashiell Hammett

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Samuel Dashiell Hammett

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Dashiell Hammett
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Dashiell Hammett.
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Dashiell Hammett. (credit: Culver Pictures, Inc.)
(born May 27, 1894, St. Mary's county, Md., U.S.died Jan. 10, 1961, New York, N.Y.) U.S. detective novelist. He left school at age 13. He spent eight years as a private detective before beginning to publish fiction in pulp magazines. His first novels were Red Harvest (1929) and The Dain Curse (1929). The Maltese Falcon (1930; film, 1941), considered his finest work, introduced Sam Spade, the prototype of the hard-boiled detective. It was followed by the story collection The Continental Op (1930) and the novel The Glass Key (1931). The Thin Man (1934), featuring the witty detective couple Nick and Nora Charles, spawned a popular series of movies. Nora was based on Lillian Hellman, with whom Hammett had a romantic alliance from 1930 until his death. He later worked as a screenwriter. For refusing to answer questions about his Communist Party affiliations and those of his associates, he served a six-month prison sentence in 1951.

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Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Dashiell Hammett

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Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was a seminal figure in the development of the peculiarly American contribution to crime fiction - the hard-boiled detective story.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born of English and French descendants on May 27, 1894, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the second of three children. His formal education was limited - he attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute for just one year, leaving at the age of 13 to help his father run a small business. He worked in his teens as a newsboy, freight clerk, railroad laborer, messenger boy, and stevedore.

From 1915 to 1921 Hammett worked on and off as an operative for the Pinkerton detective agency, serving on the scandalous Fatty Arbuckle rape case and on the 1920-1921 Anaconda copper mine strike. Hammett's Pinkerton tenure, which was to provide the material for much of his fiction, was interrupted several times, first by his brief World War I service as a sergeant in the Motor Ambulance Corps, where he contracted tuberculosis, and then by the disease's recurrence a few years after the war. Throughout his life Hammett was to be plagued by poor health, aggravated no doubt by his heavy drinking and smoking.

In 1920, while a hospital patient, Hammett married his nurse, Josephine Dolan, by whom he had two daughters, but their cohabitation was only occasional. Much of the time, to avoid the danger of infecting her or the children with his highly contagious disease, Hammett occupied a separate room of their apartment and, at times, lived apart from the family in a hotel.

The Writing Years

Hammett's writing career began in earnest in 1922 with a story printed in The Smart Set; until then he had published only a handful of poems. In 1923, in the pioneering crime fiction magazine Black Mask, Hammett's story "Arson Plus" introduced a character later to become famous in two of his novels - a nameless San Francisco detective agency operative (based on an actual Baltimore Pinkerton agent) referred to only as "the Continental Op"; his persona ran counter to the familiar fictional detective types because he was neither a genius nor a dandy but a fat, fortyish, low-keyed professional matter-of-factly doing his unglamorous job.

Hammett's stories are less artistically successful than his novels. They display a sure hand at characterization, dialogue, and setting, but the plots tend toward an over-complexity which then require too much authorial explanation in the wrap-up.

Hammett ground out a precarious living in the 1920s, supplementing his income from fiction by book-reviewing:in 1924 and 1925 he wrote three reviews for Forum, a prestigious literary journal; from 1927 to 1929, more than 50 mystery novel reviews for the Saturday Review of Literature; and in 1929 and 1930, 85 mystery novel reviews for the New York Evening Post.

The first Continental Op novel, Red Harvest (1928), was originally serialized in four parts in Black Mask. Anaconda, Montana, familiar to Hammett from his Pinkerton days, served as the model for its setting, Personville, which its cynical inhabitants pronounce "Poisonville." The novel is primarily a thriller but offers a big sociological bonus in its scathing dissection of small-town American corruption.

The Dain Curse (1929) was the second and last Op novel, although three more Op stories appeared later. It is a broken-backed novel, the plot of which seems exhausted a third of the way in but is then surprisingly reopened. It is less sociological than Red Harvest but even more sensational. It involves multiple murder (eight in all), madness, morphine addiction, sexual phobia, and religious cultism. Its theme is mythic:beauty and innocence traduced by evil but finally redeemed by a savior (the Op).

The Maltese Falcon (1930) was perhaps Hammett's masterpiece. A new hero-detective, Sam Spade, was introduced but, unlike the Op, he does not serve as the narrator of the novel, which was written in the third person. In his introduction to the 1934 Modern Library edition Hammett said of Spade:"He is a loner, operating outside of agencies and outside of the law, but has the same code as the Op - a personal sense of right which supersedes civil law." Also, like the Op, Spade is street-wise, and both "have the calloused emotions needed to do their jobs effectively." Sam Spade, more than the Op, served as the prototype for hundreds of tough, wise-cracking fictional detectives; the influence at its best resulted in Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer; at its worst it resulted in Mickey Spillane's sex-and-violence caricature, Mike Hammer.

The Maltese Falcon theme is the destructive power of greed and the illusory nature of wealth, which is expressed through a superb symbol:the much-sought-after jewel encrusted object never appears - all the scheming and killing, ironically, are done for a worthless imitation. The novel was a huge success, reprinted seven times in its first year, and the movie rights were sold to Warner Brothers. A later remake (1941) starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre became a cult classic and is unquestionably the finest of the many film adaptations of Hammett's novels.

The Glass Key (1931) was Hammett's favorite among his novels. Written in one continuous writing session of 30 hours, it is a hard-boiled variation of the traditional love triangle, of two friends in love with the same woman, played out against a backdrop of political manipulation, upper-class decadence, and murder. Its theme is the dehumanizing effect of social and political power. The book is a model of novelistic objectivity:there is no sentimentalizing, no character evaluation, and no social editorializing. Hammett dedicated the book to Nell Martin, with whom he lived in New York from 1929 to 1931.

In the 1930s Hammett spent five years on Hollywood payrolls doing very little movie writing but living lavishly and flamboyantly, and occasionally involving himself in left-wing political causes. He also wrote stories for the better-paying slick magazines such as Collier's, Liberty, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, and American Magazine. Although he was one of the highest-paid writers of the 1930s, his expenses usually exceeded his income. It was in Hollywood that he struck up an enduring friendship with playwright Lillian Hellman, whose work he encouraged and even occasionally revised; although a romantic legend sprang up around their love affair, Hammett remained very much a loner all of his life and lived apart from Hellman much more than with her.

The Thin Man (1934), Hammett's last novel, was banned in Canada and was labelled "amoral" by a number of magazine editors who refused to serialize it. Nick Charles, an ex-private detective who retired after marrying into wealth, reluctantly investigates a man's disappearance and some related murders. Nick's investigative style is passive:he doesn't go out in search of anyone or anything - it all comes to him. What scandalized the bluenoses was the image of a married couple, Nick and Nora, who seemed less than monogamous (long before the voguish concept of the "open marriage"). The characters who populate the novel mark a reduction in Hammett's customary energy level, but it is still an engaging, well-plotted suspense tale. Ironically, though it was perhaps artistically the weakest of Hammett's novels, it was by far his greatest commercial success. Earnings from the novel, its characters, and spin-offs from 1933 to 1950 totaled about $1 million. An interesting sidelight was the public confusion as to the identity of "the thin man, " which was compounded by the photograph of the tubercularly thin Hammett on the novel's dust jacket and by the film persona created by the elegantly slim William Powell. Actually, the sobriquet applied not at all to Nick Charles, but to the missing man that Charles was seeking.

The Later Years

Perhaps a bigger mystery than any Hammett created was the virtual end, at age 39, of his career. Undoubtedly poor health exacerbated by dissipation was part of the story, but another part was his temperament. Hammett never took fame seriously, nor did extremes of poverty and affluence ever seem to affect him deeply. Above all, he seems not to have been at all ambitious.

"Dash, " as his friends called him, was a prematurely gray-haired, nattily-dressed, slender six-footer who was (despite his fondness for privacy) universally well-liked. He was a "night writer, " one who preferred writing in the wee small hours. He was also an inveterate reader who especially admired the work of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ben Hecht, Robinson Jeffers, and William Faulkner; the last, in fact, became a good friend and drinking companion.

During World War II, at the age of 48, Hammett enlisted as a private in the Army and edited an Alaskan army camp newspaper, The Adakian, from 1944 to 1945. He was honorably discharged as a sergeant in 1945 and began teaching writing courses at Jefferson School of Social Science, a Marxist institute in New York City. In the late 1940s Hammett was earning $1, 300 a week for three weekly radio serials using his fictional characters Sam Spade, the Thin Man, and the Fat Man (Caspar Gutman from The Maltese Falcon).

In 1951, however, Hammett's fortunes took a downward turn. He became one of many victims of the super-patriotic hysteria that characterized post-war American political life. Hammett had for some years been president of the New York Civil Rights Congress, and when it posted bail for a group of Communists on trial for conspiracy, four of whom jumped bail and disappeared, Hammett was subpoenaed. His subsequent refusal to reveal the sources of the bail fund resulted in a contempt citation, the cancellation of his Sam Spade radio series, and imprisonment. The irony of his political victimization was striking:Hammett's active connection with the Communist movement was, by all accounts, very slight. Lillian Hellman, in fact, later said that as far as she knew Hammett had never once been to the congress' offices and hadn't known the name of even one contributor. But he had told her, "If it were my life, I would give it for what I think democracy is … (but) I don't let cops or judges tell me what I think democracy is."

After serving five months in prison he was released but then immediately charged by the Internal Revenue Service with $100, 000 in back taxes. In 1953 he appeared as a polite but unsympathetic witness before a Senate committee investigating pro-Communist books on overseas library shelves; the committee, headed by the infamous Joseph McCarthy, branded Hammett's books as "subversive" and recommended their removal!

Money and health gone forever, Hammett spent his last years in alcoholic seclusion, living in a small rural cottage in Katonah, New York, and spending his summers at Lillian Hellman's house on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Here he suffered a heart attack in 1955. He died on January 10, 1961, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

Further Reading

The two major biographical sources are Richard Layman's Shadow Man:The Life of Dashiell Hammett (1981) and Diane Johnson's Dashiell Hammett (1983). A more personal view may be found in Lillian Hellman's four memoirs, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time, An Unfinished Woman, and her introduction to a reprint of some of Hammett's work, The Big Knockover (1972). There is also a lovingly humorous fictional portrait in Joe Gores' parodistic thriller Hammett (1975).

Additional Sources

Johnson, Diane, Dashiell Hammett, a life, New York:Random House, 1983.

Layman, Richard, Shadow man:the life of Dashiell Hammett, New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984, 1981.

Nolan, William F., Hammett: a life at the edge, New York: Congdon & Weed:Distributed by St. Martin's Press, 1983.

Symons, Julian, Dashiell Hammett, San Diego:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Dashiell Hammett

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Hammett, Dashiell (dəshēl'), 1894-1961, American writer, b. St. Mary's co., Maryland. After a variety of jobs, including several years working as a detective for the Pinkerton agency, beginning in the early 1920s he found success as a writer, largely originating the "hard-boiled" school of detective fiction. His stories, about 90 in all, are realistic, fast-paced, and marked by a certain sophistication and a merciless detachment. He was the creator of Nick Charles and Sam Spade, the latter being the original tough "private eye." Hammett's novels The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931), and The Thin Man (1932), are considered classics of the genre; all were made into successful movies. Lillian Hellman, his companion of many years, wrote of their relationship in Pentimento (1973) and other autobiographical works.

Bibliography

See posthumous collections of his stories, The Big Knockover, ed. by L. Hellman (1966), The Continental Op, ed. by S. Marcus (1974), and Crime Stories and Other Writings, ed. by S. Marcus (2001); his Complete Novels (1999); R. Layman, ed., Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, 1921-1990 (2001); biographies by R. Layman (1984) and D. Johnson (1987); J. Mellen, Hellman and Hammett (1996); studies by W. Marling (1983) and J. Symons (1985).

Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature:

Works by Dashiell Hammett

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(1894-1961)

1929Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. Hammett's first detective novels, two cases of the unnamed detective "Continental Op," establish his characteristic stripped-down, muscular prose style with authentic dialogue and a gritty, realistic treatment of crime. Raymond Chandler, who credited Hammett with originating the hard-boiled detective story, would remark, "Hammett took murder out of the Venetian case and dropped it into the alley.... [He] gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse."
1930The Maltese Falcon. Hammett's third novel introduces archetypal hard-boiled private eye Sam Spade in a grittily realistic, morally ambiguous mystery that is considered by many the standard by which subsequent American mysteries must be judged.
1932The Thin Man. Hammett's last novel introduces the husband-and-wife sleuths Nick and Nora Charles (based on Hammett himself and Lillian Hellman), in what proves to be the writer's biggest-selling work. The book makes Hammett a celebrity and a fortune, but he would write no other novels or stories. Hammett would later state that "nobody ever invented a more insufferably smug pair of characters." His readers, however, find them irresistible, and the 1934 film, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, was so popular that five sequels followed.
1944The Battle of the Aleutians. This pictorial booklet, written with Robert Colodny, describes military tactics on the Alaskan islands during 1942-1943.

AMG AllMovie Guide:

Dashiell Hammett

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Biography

Dashiell Hammett did not pen many novels, but the few he did pen have had a profound effect upon the crime-drama/mystery genre. His character Sam Spade, was the original "hard-boiled" detective and became the basis for such other characters as Philip Marlowe, and Mike Hammer. Hammett was born and raised in St. Mary's County, Maryland. At age 13, he dropped out of school to become a courier. He then worked as a long-shoreman and from there became a Pinkerton detective. As an investigator he looked into Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's alleged involvement in the rape and murder of actress Virginia Rappe, and into the activities of notorious gambler Nick Arnstein. Hammett wrote his five mystery novels between the late 1920s and early 1930s. Three of those books became novels, the most famous being the 1941 film noir classic The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet (an excellent earlier version of the story was made in 1931). The Glass Key (1935, 1941) and the Thin Man, which became the basis of a five-film series between 1934 and 1947, were the other two that made it to film. Hammett became a story writer for Paramount in 1931. His first and best known such story was that of City Streets (1931). He also wrote screenplays such as Watch on the Rhine. Hammett's career was destroyed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951 when they identified him as an active communist. Hammett did not cooperate during the hearings and spent six months in jail. Later the Internal Revenue service accused him of tax delinquency and Hammett never wrote again. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Dashiell Hammett

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Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett
Born Samuel Dashiell Hammett
(1894-05-27)May 27, 1894
Saint Mary's County, Maryland,
United States
Died January 10, 1961(1961-01-10) (aged 66)
New York City,
United States
Occupation Novelist
Nationality American
Period 1929–1951
Genres Hardboiled crime fiction,
detective fiction

Samuel Dashiell Hammett (play /dəˈʃiːl/; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, screenplay writer, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse).

In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett "is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time"[1] and was called, in his obituary in The New York Times, "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction".[2] Time magazine included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on a list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.[3]

Contents

Early life

Hammett was born on a farm called Hopewell and Aim in St. Mary's County, in southern Maryland.[4] His parents were Richard Thomas Hammett and Anne Bond Dashiell. His mother belonged to an old Maryland family whose name was Anglicized from the French De Chiel. Hammett was baptized a Catholic[5] and grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. "Sam," as he was known before he began writing, left school when he was 13 years old and held several jobs before working for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He served as an operative for the Pinkertons from 1915 to February 1922, with time off to serve in World War I. However, the agency's role in union strike-breaking eventually disillusioned him.[6]

Hammett enlisted in the United States Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps. However, he became ill with the Spanish flu and later contracted tuberculosis. He spent most of his time in the Army as a patient in Cushman Hospital, Tacoma, Washington. While there he met a nurse, Josephine Dolan, whom he later married.

Marriage and family

Hammett and Dolan were married, and they had two daughters, Mary Jane (born 15 October 1921) and Josephine (born in 1926).[7] Shortly after the birth of their second child, Health Services nurses informed Josephine that due to Hammett's TB, she and the children should not live with him full time. Josephine rented a home in San Francisco, where Hammett would visit on weekends. The marriage soon fell apart, but he continued to support his wife and daughters financially with the income he made from his writing.[8]

Career

Known for his authenticity and realism, Hammett drew on his experiences as a Pinkerton operative. As Hammett said: "All my characters were based on people I've known personally, or known about."[9]

Hammett turned to alcohol before working in advertising and, eventually, writing. His work at the detective agency provided him the inspiration for his writings.[10] Hammett wrote most of his detective fiction during the period that he was living in San Francisco (the 1920's), and specific streets and locations in San Francisco are frequently mentioned in his stories.

Raymond Chandler, the writer often considered Hammett's successor, summarized his accomplishments:

"Hammett was the ace performer... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before."

- Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

Later years

From 1929 to 1930 Dashiell was romantically involved with Nell Martin, an author of short stories and several novels. He dedicated The Glass Key to her, and in turn, she dedicated her novel Lovers Should Marry to Hammett.

In 1931, Hammett embarked on a 30-year affair with playwright Lillian Hellman. This relationship was portrayed in the film Julia, in which Hammett was portrayed by Jason Robards and Hellman by Jane Fonda, in Oscar-winning and -nominated performances respectively.

He wrote his final novel in 1934, and devoted much of the rest of his life to left-wing activism. He was a strong anti-fascist throughout the 1930s and in 1937 he joined the American Communist Party.[11] As a member (and in 1941 president) of the League of American Writers, he served on its Keep America Out of War Committee in January 1940 during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact.[12] The League again abruptly shifted its political position, ending its anti-war stance, with the German invasion of the USSR in the summer of 1941.

Service in World War II

In early 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hammett again enlisted in the United States Army. He was a disabled veteran of World War I, and a victim of tuberculosis, but he pulled strings in order to be admitted. He served as a sergeant in the Aleutian Islands, where he edited an Army newspaper. He also fell victim to emphysema. As a corporal in 1943, he had co-authored The Battle of the Aleutians with Cpl. Robert Colodny, under the direction of an Infantry intelligence officer, Major Henry W. Hall.

Post-war political activity

After the war, Hammett returned to political activism, "but he played that role with less fervor than before."[13] He was elected President of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) on June 5, 1946 at a meeting held at the Hotel Diplomat in New York City, and "devoted the largest portion of his working time to CRC activities."[13] In 1946, a bail fund was created by the CRC "to be used at the discretion of three trustees to gain the release of defendants arrested for political reasons."[14] Those three trustees were Hammett, who was chairman, Robert W. Dunn, and Frederick Vanderbilt Field, "millionaire Communist supporter."[14] On April 3, 1947, the CRC was designated a Communist front group on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations, as directed by U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9835.[15]

Imprisonment and the blacklist

See also: Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders

The CRC's bail fund gained national attention on November 4, 1949, when bail in the amount of "$260,000 in negotiable government bonds" was posted "to free eleven men appealing their convictions under the Smith Act for criminal conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the United States government by force and violence."[14] On July 2, 1951, their appeals exhausted, four of the convicted men fled rather than surrender themselves to Federal agents and begin serving their sentences. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued subpoenas to the trustees of the CRC bail fund in an attempt to learn the whereabouts of the fugitives.[14] Hammett testified on July 9, 1951 in front of United States District Court Judge Sylvester Ryan, facing questioning by Irving Saypol, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, described by Time as "the nation's number one legal hunter of top Communists".[14] During the hearing Hammett refused to provide the information the government wanted, specifically, the list of contributors to the bail fund, "people who might be sympathetic enough to harbor the fugitives."[14] Instead, on every question regarding the CRC or the bail fund, Hammett took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to even identify his signature or initials on CRC documents the government had subpoenaed. As soon as his testimony concluded, Hammett was found guilty of contempt of court.[14][16][17][18] Hammett served time in a West Virginia federal penitentiary where, according to Lillian Hellman,[19] he was assigned to cleaning toilets.[20]

During the 1950s he was investigated by Congress as part of Senator Joseph McCarthy's attempt to identify Communist influence on American society and politics. He testified on March 26, 1953 before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations about his own activities, but refused to cooperate with the committee and was blacklisted.

Death

Grave of Samuel Dashiell Hammett in Arlington National Cemetery, (Section 12, Site 508)

A lifetime's heavy consumption of alcohol and cigarettes worsened Hammett's tuberculosis contracted in World War I, and then according to Hellman "jail had made a thin man thinner, a sick man sicker . . . I knew he would now always be sick."[21] He may have meant to start a new literary life with the novel Tulip, but left it unfinished perhaps because he was "just too ill to care, too worn out to listen to plans or read contracts. The fact of breathing, just breathing, took up all the days and nights."[22]

As the years of the 1950s wore on, Hellman says Hammett became "a hermit," his decline evident in the clutter of his rented "ugly little country cottage" where "[t]he signs of sickness were all around: now the phonograph was unplayed, the typewriter untouched, the beloved foolish gadgets unopened in their packages."[23] Hammett no longer could live alone and they both knew it, so the last four years of his life he spent with Hellman. "Not all of that time was easy, and some of it very bad, " she says but, "guessing death was not too far away, I would try for something to have afterwards." [24] January 10, 1961, Hammett died in New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, of lung cancer, diagnosed just two months before. As a veteran of two World Wars, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Works

Novels

All the novels except The Thin Man were originally serialized in three, four, or five parts in various magazines.[25]

Short fiction

  • "The Gatewood Caper", 1923
  • "Nightmare Town", 1924
  • "The Tenth Clew", 1924
  • "The House in Turk Street", 1924
  • "The Girl with the Silver Eyes", 1924
  • "Dead Yellow Women," 1925
  • "The Gutting of Couffignal", 1925
  • "The Scorched Face", 1925
  • "Corkscrew", 1925
  • "The Whosis Kid", 1925
  • "The Main Death," 1927
  • "The Big Knockover", 1927
  • "$106,000 Blood Money", 1927
  • "This King Business", 1928
  • "Fly Paper", 1929
  • "The Farewell Murder", 1930
  • "A Man Called Spade", 1932
  • "Too Many Have Lived", 1932
  • "They Can Only Hang You Once", 1932

Collected short fiction

Question book-new.svg This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.
  • $106,000 Blood Money (Bestseller Mystery, 1943) A paperback digest that collects two connected Op stories, The Big Knockover and $106,000 Blood Money.
  • Blood Money (Tower, 1943) The hardcover edition of the Bestseller Mystery title.
  • The Adventures of Sam Spade (Bestseller Mystery, 1944). Paperback digest that collects the three Spade stories and four others. This and the following eight digest collections were compiled and edited by Fred Dannay (one-half of Ellery Queen) with Hammett's permission. All of these were reprinted as dell map-back paperbacks.
  • The Continental Op (Bestseller Mystery, 1945) Paperback digest that collects four Op stories.
  • The Adventures of Sam Spade (Tower, 1945). The hardcover edition of the digest of the same title—this was the last time the digests were reprinted in hardcover.
  • The Return of the Continental Op (The Jonathan Press, 1945). Paperback digest that collects five further Op stories).
  • Hammett Homicides (Bestseller Mysteries, 1946). Paperback digest that collects six stories, including four that feature the Op.
  • Dead Yellow Women (The Jonathan Press, 1947). Paperback digest that collects six stories, including four that feature the Op.
  • Nightmare Town (American Mercury, 1948). Paperback digest that collects four stories, two of which feature the Op.
  • The Creeping Siamese (American Mercury, 1950). Paperback digest that collects six stories, three of which feature the Op.
  • Woman in the Dark (The Jonathan Press, 1951). Paperback digest that collects six stories, including three that feature the Op, and the three-part novelette Woman in the Dark.
  • A Man Named Thin (Mercury Mystery, 1962). The last paperback digest, collects eight stories, including one Op story.
  • The Big Knockover (Random House, 1966; an important collection, edited by Lillian Hellman, that helped revive Hammett's literary reputation; includes the unfinished novel Tulip).
  • The Continental Op (Random House, 1974; edited by Steven Marcus).
  • Woman in the Dark (Knopf, 1988; hardcover edition that collects the three parts of the title novelette; introduction by Robert B. Parker).
  • Nightmare Town (Knopf, 1999; hardcover collection, contents different from the digest title of the same name).
  • Lost Stories (Vince Emery Productions, 2005; collects 21 stories that have not been collected previously in hardcover or, in several cases, ever. Emery provides several long commentaries on Hammett's career that provide context for the stories; introduction by Joe Gores).

Uncollected stories

Question book-new.svg This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.
  • The Diamond Wager (Detective Fiction Weekly, October 19, 1929).
  • On the Way (Harper's Bazaar, March 1932).

Other publications

Question book-new.svg This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.
  • Creeps by Night; Chills and Thrills (John Day, 1931; Anthology edited by Hammett)[26]
  • Secret Agent X-9 Book 1 (David McKay, 1934; collection of the comic strip written by Hammett and illustrated by Alex Raymond)
  • Secret Agent X-9 Book 2 (David McKay, 1934; a second collection of the comic strip).
  • The Battle of the Aleutians (Field Force Headquarters, Adak, Alaska, 1944; text written by Hammett, with illustrations by Robert Colodny).
  • Watch on the Rhine (screenplay of Hellman's play, in Best Film Plays 1943-44, Crown, 1945; also includes the screenplay for Casablanca).

Unpublished stories

In 2011, magazine editor Andrew Gulli found fifteen previously unknown short stories by Dashiell Hammett in the archives of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin.[27]

Published as

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References

  1. ^ Layman, Richard (1981). Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 239. ISBN 0-15-181459-7. 
  2. ^ Layman, Richard & Bruccoli, Matthew J. (2002). Hardboiled Mystery Writers: A Literary Reference. Carroll & Graf. pp. 225. ISBN 0-7867-1029-2. 
  3. ^ Lev Grossman; Richard Lacayo (2005-10-31). "TIME's Critics pick the 100 Best Novels 1923 to the Present". Time. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 
  4. ^ Shoemaker, Sandy. Tobacco to Tomcats: St. Mary's County since the Revolution. StreamLine Enterprises, Leonardtown, Maryland. pp. 160. http://www.somd.lib.md.us/tobacco_to_tomcats/. Retrieved 2008-01-01. 
  5. ^ Gores, Joe in Emery, Vince, editor, Dashiell Hammett: Lost Stories. San Francisco: Vince Emery Productions, 2005, p. 197.
  6. ^ Thomas Heise, "'Going blood-simple like the natives': Contagious Urban Spaces and Modern Power in Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest", Modern Fiction Studies 51, no. 3 (Fall 2005) 506.
  7. ^ Layman, Richard with Rivett, Julie M. (2001). "Review" of Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett 1921-1960, Retrieved on 2009-06-02
  8. ^ Gores in Emery, editor, p. 240 and 336.
  9. ^ Chandler, Nightmare Town, p. iii, ISBN 0-375-70102-8, ISBN 978-0-375-70102-3, searchable on Google Books in snippet form, Google Books ID xAEPAQAAMAAJ, URL http://books.google.com/books?ei=q3-gTu6_B5LMsQLnut3FBQ&ct=result&id=xAEPAQAAMAAJ.
  10. ^ Gores in Emery, editor, pp. 18-24.
  11. ^ FAQ at the CPUSA site
  12. ^ Franklin Folsom, Days of Anger, Days of Hope, University Press of Colorado, 1994, ISBN 0-87081-332-3
  13. ^ a b Layman, Richard (1981). Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 206. ISBN 0-15-181459-7. 
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett, pp. 219-223
  15. ^ Enid Nemy (February 7, 2000). "Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Wealthy Leftist, Dies at 94". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E0D9163EF934A35751C0A9669C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/N/Nemy,%20Enid. Retrieved 2007-11-27. 
  16. ^ Metress, Christopher (1994). The Critical Response to Dashiell Hammett. Greenwood Press. 
  17. ^ Johnson, Diane (1983). Dashiell Hammett, a Life. Random House. 
  18. ^ Petri Liukkonen. "Dashiell Hammett". Books and Writers. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dhammett.htm. Retrieved 2007-11-27. 
  19. ^ Hellman, Lilian, Introduction to Hammett, Dashiell, The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels (Houghton Mifflin: 1962) (published posthumously--Hammett had turned down offers to republish his stories and Hellman did so only after his death, as a tribute.), pp. vii-viii
  20. ^ Hellman's Introduction to The Big Knockover pp. xi-xii Hellman says there began an "irritating farce" that Dashiell told her he was cleaning bathrooms "better than [she] had ever done" and "learned to take pride in the work" which she called his form of boasting, or humor, "to make fun of trouble or pain."
  21. ^ Hellman's Introduction to The Big Knockover pp. xi & xii
  22. ^ Hellman's Introduction to The Big Knockover p. viii (Hellman speculates Hammett turned down republishing offers because he might have hoped for a fresh start and "didn't want the old work to get in the way.")
  23. ^ Hellman's Introduction to The Big Knockover p. xx
  24. ^ Hellman's Introduction to The Big Knockover p. xxvi
  25. ^ Checklist of Dashiell Hammett FictionChecklist of Dashiell Hammett Fiction
  26. ^ Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 140. 
  27. ^ Harris, Paul (February 4, 2011). "Dashiell Hammett's lost works found in Texas". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/04/dashiell-hammett-unpublished-works-found. 

Bibliography

  • Mundell, E.H. A List of the Original Appearances of Dashiell Hammett's Magazine Work, 1968, The Kent State University, Ohio.
  • Layman, Richard. Dashiell Hammett: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1979, Pittsburgh Series in Bibliography, University of Pittsburgh Press.
  • Lovisi, Gary. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler: A Checklist and Bibliography of Their Paperback Appearances, 1994, Gryphon Books.

Biography/criticism/reference

  • Nolan, William F. Dashiell Hammett: A Casebook, 1969, McNally & Lofin, Santa Barbara.
  • Fechheimer, David, editor. City of San Francisco: Dashiell Hammett Issue, 4 November 1975, City Publishing, San Francisco.
  • Braun, Martin. Prototypen der amerikanischen Kriminalzahlung: Die Romane und Kurzgeschichten Carroll John Daly und Dashiell Hammett, 1977, Lang, Frankfurt.
  • Layman, Richard. Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett, 1981, Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, New York
  • Nolan, William F. Hammett: A Life at the Edge, 1983, Congdon & Weed, New York.
  • Johnson, Diane. Dashiell Hammett: A Life, 1983, Random House, New York.
  • Marling, William. Dashiell Hammett, 1983, Twayne, New York.
  • Symons, Julian. Dashiell Hammett, 1985, Harcourt, Brace & Javonovich, New York.
  • Gregory, Sinda. Private Investigations: The Novels of Dashiell Hammett, 1985, Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Christopher Metress, ed. The Critical Response to Dashiell Hammett, 1994, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut.
  • Maurin, Maria Jose Alvarez. Claves Para un Enigma: La Poetica del Misterio en la Narrativa de Dashiell Hammett, 1994, Universidad de Leon.
  • Mellon, Joan. Hellman and Hammett, 1996, Harper Collins, New York.
  • Beunat, Natalie. Dashiell Hammett: Parcours d'une oeuvre, 1997, Encrage Edition, Amiens.
  • Gale, Robert L. A Dashiell Hammett Companion, 2000, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut.
  • Layman, Richard. Literary Masters, Volume 3: Dashiell Hammett, 2000, Gale Group, Detroit.
  • Hammett, Jo. Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers, 2001, Carroll and Graf Publishers.
  • Panek, Leroy Lad. Reading Early Hammett: A Critical Study of the Fiction Prior to The Maltese Falcon, 2004, McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina.
  • Lopez, Jesus Angel Gonzalez. La Narrativa Popular de Dashiell Hammett: Pulps, Cine, Y Comics, 2004, Biblioteca Javier Coy d'Estudis Nord-Americans, Universitat de Valencia.
  • Layman, Richard, guest editor. Clues: A Journal of Detection; Theme Issue: Dashiell Hammett, Winter 2005, Heldref Publications, Washington DC.
  • Thompson, George J. "Rhino". Hammett's Moral Vision, 2007, Vince Emery Productions, San Francisco.
  • Herron, Don. The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook, 2009, Vince Emery Productions, San Francisco.
  • Lillian Hellman's three volumes of memoir, An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time contain much Hammett-related material.

External links
Films
See also
Dashiell Hammett  · William Powell  · Myrna Loy  · Asta

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