A Century of Detection: Twenty Great Mystery Stories, 1841-1940

Appropriate both for the general reader and the student, this wide-ranging anthology of mystery stories provides a chronological and thematic survey of early detection fiction. Included are classic texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, and Susan Glaspell; lesser-known gems by the likes of Wilkie Collins, Mark Twain, Dashiell Hammett, and Ralph Ellison; and innovative or historically significant stories by Mary Wilkins Freeman, Anna Katharine Green, Cornell Woolrich, and others. Six thematic categories foreground the genre's fluidity and evolution, with selections presenting detectives in an array of nationalities, genders and sexual orientations, socioeconomic classes, political points of view, and ethnic and racial backgrounds.