Anna Katharine Green

Anna Katharine Green photographed sometime between 1870 and 1890

Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 – April 11, 1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories.

Life and work

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Green had an early ambition to write romantic verse, and she corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, she produced her first and best known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878), praised by Wilkie Collins, and the hit of the year. She became a bestselling author, eventually publishing about 40 books.

She is credited with shaping detective fiction into its classic form, and developing the series detective. Her main character was detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force, but in three novels he is assisted by the nosy society spinster Amelia Butterworth, the prototype for Miss Marple, Miss Silver and other creations. She also invented the 'girl detective': in the character of Violet Strange, a debutante with a secret life as a sleuth.

Green was in some ways a progressive woman for her time—succeeding in a genre dominated by male writers—but she did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries, and she was opposed to women's suffrage.

Green married the actor, and later designer and artist, Charles Rohlfs on November 25, 1884. Seven years her junior, Charles was made to give up acting by Anna's father before he could marry her. They had one daughter and two sons, Roland Rohlfs and Sterling Rohlfs, who were test pilots. Green died in Buffalo, New York, at the age of 88.

Selected works

Cover of The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow by Anna Katharine Green

• The Leavenworth Case (1878)
• A Strange Disappearance (1880)
• Hand and Ring (1883)
• Behind Closed Doors (1888)
• Forsaken Inn (1890)
• Marked "Personal" (1893)
• The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock (1895)
• The Affair Next Door (1897)
• Lost Man's Lane (1898)
• The Circular Study (1900)
• The Filigree Ball (1903)
• The House in the Mist (1905)
• The Millionaire Baby (1905)
• The Woman in the Alcove (1906)
• The House of the Whispering Pines (1910)
• The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917)
• The Step on the Stair (1923)

References

• New York Times; April 12, 1935, Friday; A. K. Green Dies; Noted Author, 88; 'The Leavenworth Case' in '78 Followed by 36 Other Books—Wife of Charles Rohlfs, Wanted to Write Poetry. Wrote Detective Stories to Draw Attention to Her Verse-Changed Mystery Fiction.
• Maida, Patricia D. (1989) Mother of Detective Fiction: the life and works of Anna Katherine Green Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
• Murch, Alma (1958) The Development of the Detective Novel P. Owen, London.
• Landrum, Larry (1999) American Mystery and Detective Novels: a reference guide Greenwood Press, Westport CT.

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Anna Katharine Green

• Works by Anna Katharine Green at Project Gutenberg
• Chronology of Green's life and career from the Tarlton Law Library's Law in Popular Culture Collection, at the University of Texas at Austin.
• Anna Katharine Green at Find a Grave

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