In the Shadow of Agatha Christie: Classic Crime Fiction by Forgotten Female Writers: 1850-1917 by Leslie S. Klinger Published by Pegasus Crime on February 12, 2019
Source: Gift
Genres: Anthology, Crime Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 356
Format: Paperback
Purchase at Bookshop.org
Add on Goodreads
Before Agatha Christie became the world’s Queen of Crime, she stood on the talented shoulders of the female crime authors who came before her. This splendid new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger brings these exceptional writers out of Christie’s shadow and back into the spotlight they deserve.
Agatha Christie is undoubtedly the world’s best-selling mystery author, hailed as the “Queen of Crime,” with worldwide sales in the billions. Christie burst onto the literary scene in 1920, with The Mysterious Affair at Styles ; her last novel was published in 1976, a career longer than even Conan Doyle’s forty-year span.
The truth is that it was due to the success of writers like Anna Katherine Green in America; L. T. Meade, C. L. Pirkis, the Baroness Orczy, and Elizabeth Corbett in England; and Mary Fortune in Australia that the doors were finally opened for women crime-writers. Authors who followed them, such as Patricia Wentworth, Dorothy Sayers, and, of course, Agatha Christie would not have thrived without the bold, fearless work of their predecessors—and the genre would be much poorer for their absence. So while Agatha Christie may still reign supreme, it is important to remember that she did not ascend that throne except on the shoulders of the women who came before her—and inspired her—and who are now removed from her shadow once and for all by this superb new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger.
This collection of classic crime fiction by “forgotten” authors, from 1850-1917, highlights some of the female writers of that period who were the forerunners of the great Golden Age crime authors. Each of the featured authors is given a short biography, putting them and their work in context, which is followed by one their short stories.
Like many anthologies, this one is a mixed bag. Some I thoroughly enjoyed, some were neither her nor there, and at least one I thought was more than a little silly. Several authors are ones I’ve heard of/ read before, but many were new to me. I’ve marked a few to pick up more works by. Overall, it’s a good collection of women crimes writers at the time. The writing styles are varied as are the types of cases and crimes involved.
The stories included are:
Catherine Crowe – The Advocate’s Wedding Day
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell – The Squire’s Story
Mary Fortune – Traces of Crime
Harriet Prescott Spofford – Mr. Furbush
Ellen Wood – Mrs. Todhetley’s Earrings
Elizabeth Corbett – Catching A Burglar
C. L. Pirkis – The Ghost of Fountain Lane
Geraldine Bonner – The Statement of Jared Johnson
Ellen Glasgow – Point in Morals
L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace – The Blood-Red Cross
Baroness Orczy – The Regent’s Park Murder
Augusta Groner – The Case of the Registered Letter
M. E. Braddon – The Winning Sequence
Anna Katherine Green – Missing: Page Thirteen
Carolyn Wells – The Adventure of the Clothes-Line
Susan Glaspell – Jury of Her Peers
About Leslie S. Klinger
Leslie S. Klinger is considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein, and H. P. Lovecraft. Klinger is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and Treasurer of the Horror Writers Association. His nonfiction works have won numerous awards.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges: