Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) Author(s): PATRICIA D. MAIDA and Anna Katharine Green Source: Legacy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall 1986), pp. 53-59 Published by: University of Nebraska Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678971 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 03:03

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This content downloaded from 195.34.78.191 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 03:03:35 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LEGACY Profile Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935)

PATRICIA D. MAIDA University of theDistrict of Columbia

became known to thousands of readers as the "Mother of ." During her prolific career, she published a wealth of detective fiction including 34 novels and three collections of short stories; inaddition she published a volume of poetry and a play. Her detective fictionwas very popular with nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-century readers. For modern readers, Green's novels and short stories offer not only the classic structureof the detective story,but also a rich social history of the period from the point of view of a woman sensitive to the plight of both the single and the married woman. was among the firstto ac knowledge Green: "Her powers of invention are so remarkable?she has so much imagin ation and so much belief (amost important qualification for our art) in what she says .... Dozens of times in reading the story Anna Katharine Green [The Leavenworth Case] I have stopped to Photo Courtesy of Mary Alice Rohlfs admire the fertilityof invention, the delicate treatment of incident?and the finepercep tion of event on the personages of the story ..." (Collins 152). Although The Leaven 1878, a young woman stepped off the worth Case brought her immediate recogni Fifth Avenue Coach and to Green had not come her achieve In proceeded tion, by George Putnam's publishing house on lower ment easily.Writing insecret inorder to avoid Broadway. She carried a weighty manuscript the disapproval of her father? at caught up ina shawlstrap. The woman was torney James Wilson Green?she filled old Anna Katharine Green, a 32 year old New notebooks with her story. Her entree to Yorker. The manuscript was The Leaven George Putnam came through criticRossiter worth Case, which would sell over half a Johnson, who agreed to listen to her story; million copies and was to become a pioneer she spent two days reading to him inhis hotel ingwork in the field of detective fiction. By room. After he had listened to the story and the end of the nineteenth century, Green considered itsmerits, he contacted Putnam.

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Green seemed an unlikely person towrite domestic lifewere readily accepted" (152). detective fiction.She was diminutive, plain, When Green chose detective fiction?a gen and sheltered?hardly a woman who would re dominated bymen?she took a calculated know about crime and detection. However, risk, but her timing was right. European she was the daughter of an attorney whose writers such as Wilkie Collins, Emile Gabo home was filledwith talkabout the courts and riau, and Charles Dickens were setting the the emerging New York Metropolitan Police pace at home and abroad as the popularity Force. And she was a college graduate, ed of the genre increased. According toHoward ucated at Ripley College inVermont. But Haycraft, "American fields lay fallow from more important, she saw herself as a profes Poe's 'Purloined Letter' (1844) to Anna sional writer. At first,her medium was poe Katharine Green's The Leavenworth Case try: romantic poems of love and adventure. (1878)" (83). Although admittedly influenc In 1868 she sent some of her poems toEmer ed by Emile Gaboriau whose "romans judi son, whom she had met when he visited Rip ciares" were appearing in translation and in ley College. Emerson responded evasive pirated editions in theUnited States (Bleiber ly?avoiding a critique of specific poems, ad xx), Green was not an imitator.She observ vising her to consider whether writing poetry ed the conventions of the genre?the puz "is to be made a profession?whether one zle, the locked room, the red herrings?yet may dare leave all other things behind and her work (unlike Poe's detective fiction) is . write. ." (Letters of RWE 23). Ironically, distinctlyAmerican. she wrote her firstnovel inan attempt to gain The Leavenworth Case pivots on the enough recognition so that her poetry might murder of Manhattan millionaire, Horatio be published. In 1888 Putnam did issue a Leavenworth, whose body is found in the volume of her poetry, The Defence of the locked study of his FifthAvenue brownstone. Bride, but the praise forwhich she had hoped The lure of FifthAvenue, the public intox was not forthcoming. icationwith the escapades of the "400," New A resilientand determined woman, Green York's inner circle, the opportunity to visit was not one to give up easily or to allow cir (even vicariously) the inside of a brown cumstances to divert her. She was born An stone?these features provided a rich back na Catherine Green, the fourth child of ground for the novel. By choosing Manhat Catherine Ann Whitney and James Wilson tan as her setting,Green effectivelyprojected Green, inBrooklyn across from Plymouth the glamor of Gotham in theway thatwriters Church on November 11, 1846.1 In 1849, likeCollins and Gaboriau had featured Lon after the death of her mother and new-born don and Paris. The setting of the novel rein brother, the familymoved fromBrooklyn to forces the puzzle, themethodical plot, and Manhattan, toAlbany, to Buffalo, and then the rich characterization. back again toManhattan. Anna's older sister From the beginning, the primary suspects Sarah Elizabeth became her "mother-sister" are Horatio Leavenworth's nieces, Mary and until their father remarried.While her family Eleanore, the apparent heirs to his fortune. was middle class and relatively comfortable, The "fair" Mary and the "dark" Eleanore theywere not wealthy or socially prominent. evoke the traditional associations of lightand Though catapulted to fame by her first darkness, beauty and mystery, but Green novel, Green faced a dilemma common to develops the characters of the two women women writers of her day. If she wanted a beyond stereotypical roles. , career, she had to choose a ready market for who became a master at weaving sets of herwork. Detective fictionwas not a field that doubles into her stories, recalls in her auto was especially open to women. According biography how the two cousins fascinated toAlma E. Murch, "publishers seemed to feel her when she firstread the novel (198). The there was something peculiarly indelicate young lawyer who assists the women per about tales of crime or criminals being writ ceives them as mysteriously unique: "like a ten by a woman, though stories of social or double vision of lightand darkness that,while

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contrasting, neither assimilated nor har readers?men, women, Americans, Euro monized" (143). The cousins share a secret peans, the young and the old. Its classic which neither one of them will reveal even form, its rendering of the American scene, though the threat of "scandal" might sully itspuzzle, itscharacterization?especially that theirgood names and ruin their chances for of Detective Ebeneezer Gryce?all contri a successful match. Green focuses on an ele buted to itssuccess. In his study ofAmerican ment that Joyce Warren develops in her bestsellers, Luther Mott recounts that "25 study of nineteenth-century women, name years after publication of The Leavenworth ly that themarriageable girl had tomaintain Case, itspublishers announced that they had the "conventional image of the lady," yetwas worn out two sets of plates reprinting the powerless to act for herself (9). regular edition and were making another" Readers of detective fictionexpected not (263). only glamor and intriguebut also verisimili A dramatic change occurred inGreen's life tude, especially in realisticdetails of the crime after 1884, when the 38 year old writer sur and evidence gleaned from scientificproce prised her fans by marrying Charles Rohlfs, dures. Green more than fulfilledreader ex an actor seven years her junior. Rohlfs pro pectations. In The Leavenworth Case, she mised to give up his acting career in order presents a facsimileof police procedures from to support his wife. For a brief time they lived the inquest held at the deceased's home, to in Connecticut where he worked as a de the examination of clues and the pursuit of signer of iron stoves; then theymoved back the murderer. to the South Park section of , a Ebeneezer Gryce was among the firstserial working-class neighborhood. While setting detectives. (ArthurConan Doyle's Sherlock up a home and giving birth to three children, Holmes arrived a decade later in 1887.) Green continued towrite daily. In 1888, the Gryce's appeal lies in his ordinary human familymoved toBuffalo and eventually built qualities, his upright character, and his a house at 156 Park Street. Throughout the realistic demeanor. A widower bothered by marriage, Green provided themajor finan chronic arthritis,a man with a penchant for cial support. Charles Rohlfs attempted to looking around rather than directlyat theper resume his acting career in the 1890s2, but son addressed, he is likely to have been he finallyachieved fame, ifnot wealth, as a based on a real model. Green had the op furnituredesigner. While he pursued his in portunity tomeet policemen, and her father terests,Green continued to produce fiction was a friend of the Chief of for the magazine and book markets. Police ("Why Human Beings Are Interested Green's attitude toward women evolved inCrime" 84). An ordinary American, not throughout her writing career, and her por or eccentric snobbish, Gryce isdifferent from trayal of them is bolder following her mar his European peers and fromPoe's Dupin. riage. Her early fictionpresents women in The public was charmed by him and looked passive roles. InThe Leavenworth Case, for forward to seeing more of this self-effacing example, the twomain characters are tradi detective. Thus between 1878 and 1917, tional nineteenth-century literaryheroines. Ebeneezer Gryce appeared in 12 novels and The "fair"Mary and the "dark" Eleanore are one short story, "Staircase at Heart's reminiscent of Cooper's Alice and Cora; they Delight"?an often anthologized classic. represent a dichotomous view of the two In effect, Green's work brought classic sides of the female character?beauty and in to a detective fiction newly established telligence. Thus Green presents her early maturity; as Murch points out, "in Miss heroines as "mainstream" male writers usual Green's we can work discern forthe firsttime, lycharacterized American upper-class wo in its the entirety, pattern that became the men. We see this repeated inA Strange characteristic ofmost English novels written Disappearance (1880), Green's second during the following fiftyyears" (159). The novel, in the portrayal of a young wife who Leavenworth Case appealed to a variety of lives as a hermit inher own house?a nine

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teenth-centurypatient Grizelda?rather than most famous amateur detective, despite her risk her husband's rejection. Among those Grammercy Park origins, isa gutsy individual works which reflect provocative change is not above checking out a Chinese laundry The Circular Study (1900). This novel, fea at midnight in order to locate important turingEbeneezer Gryce and Amelia Butter evidence (ThatAffair Next Door 1897). An worth, offersa tellingcontrast toThe Leaven unmarried sixty-ishwoman of means, she worth Case. Murder once again occurs on assists Gryce in three cases where her social FifthAvenue, but now there are street lights status and insight intocharacter help to solve and the locked door to the victim's study is the puzzle (ThatAffair Next Door 1897), Lost controlled by a series of hidden electrical swit Man's Lane 1898, and The Circular Study ches. Not only has "time" provided new 1900). A highly credible character, Butter dimensions to the setting, but the victim worth was modelled after a New York City becomes the focus of the family psycho matron who confidentially assisted theMe pathology. Doubles complicate the puzzle tropolitan Police ("Why Human Beings Are with two brothers and two sisters, two detec Interested in Crime" 39). Green's second tives, and two settings: the present inNew female serial detective isViolet Strange, a York City and the past in rural Ohio. young debutante who is featured ina 1900 However, the motive?retribution for the volume of short stories entitled A Difficult rape of a young woman by her guardian? Problem and Other Stories. Strange ismore reveals a shocking, though real, evil. independent than Butterworth, representing Although Green's work had always por the newer generation of assertive women. trayed social history, as she matured her Her father,Peter Strange, is tyrannical and revelation of injustice,particularly towomen, controlling; Violet earns her money secretly became more pointed. ?often at risk to her own safety?in order Green also became more sympathetic to to help an older sisterdisowned by her father. women trapped by failedmarriages and sub Both Strange and Butterworth might be con jected to psychological and physical abuse. sidered what Laurie Crumpacker calls For example, Miss Hurd: An Enigma (1894) "domestic feminists" since their "activity" depicts a battered wife, a run-away, whose distinguishes them from theirpeers (78-79). husband proclaims, "she belongs to me" They step out of the roles expected of wo (28). Thomas Murdoch perceives his wife as men of their class and become risk-takers. motivated by "an almost masculine desire for As fictional characters, the elderly genteel independence" (205). The portrait ofVashti woman and the young independent woman Murdoch is tempered by reality?she isbeau established a literaryheritage. In her study tiful(though not dainty) and knowledgeable; of the genre, Joan Mooney considers Caro although she evokes sympathy, no one can lynWells and Mary Roberts Rinehart to be legallyprevent her husband from reclaiming Green's immediate successors among Ame her. By revealing thiswoman's desperate at ricanwomen writers, creating female sleuths tempts to free herself, Green presented the of comparable stealth (101). Certainly situation forpublic scrutiny?to an audience Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and the host of both men and women. of young aristocratic female sleuthswho peo With the creation of her female detectives, ple her novels bear resemblance toGreen's Green also presents women who are inde two heroines. pendent, capable, and successful. Though As a basis for her plots, Green used real Ebeneezer Gryce isan original character, he lifesituations, often developing ideas from still has peers, whereas Green's women newspaper articles. While her rendering of sleuths are pioneers in a Active world peo situation and character may seem romantic pled bymen. While individual female sleuths to the reader of the 1980s, to the people of appear throughout theGreen canon, her two her own generation she represented real serial characters are Amelia Butterworth and social problems. Her appeal was not directed Violet Strange. Amelia Butterworth, Green's only to female readers. Detective fictionhad

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a predominantly male readership, and Green Notes 1 had a strong following among male readers Green the of her middle name to ? changed spelling Stanley Baldwin, Theodore Roosevelt, "Katharine" at the publication of The Leavenworth Case. Woodrow Wilson, to name a few. Since her For the family trees of the Green and Whitney families, seeS.W. Phoenix, The Whitney Family of Connecticut fictionportrays injustices, particularly those (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1878) 1517-1518, suffered by women, readers?even those 712. readers most interested in themystery puz zle?were made aware of social issues. In 2See Charles Rohlfs's letters toAugustin Daly, Folger D.C. The Mill Mystery (1886), forexample, young Library, Washington, women either become pawns in themarriage game or struggle tomake a living inorder to maintain their independence. The heroine of thisnovel laments, uOh!, the deep sadness of a woman's life!The sense of solitary help Works Cited lessness that comes upon her when every ef Bleiber, E.F., ed. Introduction. Monsieur Lecoq. fortmade, every possibility sounded, she New York: Dover, 1975. i-xxiii. realizes that the world has no place for her, An New York: and that she must either stoop to ask the Christie, Agatha. Autobiography. 1977. assistance of friends or starve!" (5-6). While Dodd, Mead/ some novels involve cases of desertion and Collins, Wilkie. "Wilkie Collins on the Leaven bigamy, in others Green presents abused worth Case." The Critic 28 Jan. 1893: 52. women, unwed mothers abandoned lov by Crumpacker, Laurie. "Four Novels of Harriet ers and swindled family, girls by guardians, Beecher Stowe: A Study inAndrogeny." Ame and heiresses made prey to fortune hunters rican Novelists Revisited. Ed. Fritz Fleischmann. ? women of all ages and social classes who Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982. 78-106. became victims. Her message to her reader Emerson, RalphWaldo. The Lettersof RWE. Ed. is in a sense a call to action. ship R.L. Rusk. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, A shrewd observer, Green spent a lifetime 1939. recording and reshaping her ideas. As a pro Green, Anna Katharine. Human fessional writer, she matured in her art "Why Beings Are Interested inCrime." American Magazine refiningthe formof detective fictionand rais Feb. 1919: 38-39, 82-86. ing public awareness of significant social _. AKG letters Private issues. She published her last novel, A Step (unpublished). collection of Mary Rohlfs. on theStair, in 1923 when she was 77 years old. Except forone tripto Europe, from 1890 Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure. New until her death on April 11, 1935, Green York: D. Appleton-Century, 1941. observed theAmerican scene fromher home Mooney, Joan M. "Best Selling American Detec inBuffalo?living quietly, spurning the lime tive Fiction." Armchair Detective 3 Jan. 1970: light.However, she managed to capture a 98-103. slice of America, often on the focusing Mott, Luther. Golden Multitudes: The Stories on of vulnerable?especially the problems of Best Sellers in the United States. New York: women. Her detectives are men and strong Macmillan and Co., 1947. ? women shakers and movers ?distin Murch, Alma E. The Development of the Detec guished by their common sense and unaf tive Novel. Westport: Greenwood, 1981. fected demeanor. Her legacy to readers of "Noted Half her generation was primarilyher detective fic Buffalonians,Wed Century Ago, 18 November 1934: tion; for readers today, that legacy endures Happy." Courier-Express 1-2. and isenhanced by the intimate social com mentary of her characters who testifyto the Woodward, Kathleen. "Anna Katharine Green." American experience. Bookman. Oct. 1929: 168-170.

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Selected Works of Anna Katharine Green

Novels The Amethyst Box. Indianapolis: The Bobbs The Leavenworth Case.New York: G.P. Put Merrill Company, 1905. nam's Sons, 1878. Upper Saddle River, NJ: The Woman in the Alcove. Indianapolis: The Literature House, 1970. Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1906. A Strange Disappearance. New York: G.P. Put The Chief Legatee. New York: Authors and nam's Sons, 1880. Newspapers Association, 1907. XYZ. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883. The Mayors Wife. Indianapolis: The Bobbs The Mill Mystery. New York: G.P. Putnam's Merrill Company, 1907. Sons, 1886. The House of theWhispering Pines. New York: 7 to 12. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1887. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1910.

Behind Closed Doors. New York: G.P. Putnam's Initials Only. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1911. Sons, 1888. To theMinute, Scarlet and Black. New York: G.P. The Forsaken Inn. New York: R. Bonner's Sons, Putnam's Sons, 1916. 1890. NY: Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, the Arrow. New York: 1971. Mystery of Hasty Dodd, Mead, 1917. Cynthia Wakeham's Money. New York: G.P. The Step on theStair. New York: Dodd, Mead, Putnam's 1892. Sons, 1923. Marked "Personal". New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1893. Short Story Collections The Old Stone House and Other Stories. New Miss HurdAn Enigma. New York: G.P. Putnam's York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1891. Freeport, Sons, 1894. N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970. The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock. New York: A DifficultProblem and Other Stories. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1895. F.P. Lupton, 1900. New York: Garrett, 1969. That Affair Next Door. New York: G.P. Putnam's Masterpieces of Mystery. New York: Dodd, Sons, 1897. Mead, 1912. Lost Man's Lane. New York: G.P. Putnam's The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Sons, 1898. Strange. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, Agatha Webb. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1915. 1899. Drama The Circular Study. New York: McClure, Phillips Risifi's Daughter, A Drama. New York: G.P. Put and Company, 1900. New York: Garland, nam's Sons, 1887. 1976.

The Filigree Ball. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Poetry Company, 1903. New York: Arno, 1976. The Defense of theBride and Other Poems. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1882.

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who had from Chapter 1 cleaner, grown paler every instant, fell ina in the and the That Affair Next Door heap entry, policeman, who was not theman Iwould want about me by Anna Katharine Green in any trouble, seemed somewhat embar rassed this new and letme She trembled; I saw that she trembled, and by emergency, liftthe and her farther in naturally became excited. Something was poor thingup drag wrong in the Van Burnam mansion, and I to the hall. She had and should have had was going to be present at itsdiscovery. But fainted, done for but anxious her next words cut my hopes short. something her, though I am to be of where isneed "I have no objection to your going in," she always help help I had no sooner within of the said to the policeman, ubut Iwill not give up ed, got range door with than I beheld my keys to her. What right has she in our parlor my burden, a so that I let the house any way." And I thought I heard her sight terrifying involuntarily woman from arms to the floor. murmur something about a meddlesome old poor slip my maid. In the darkness of a dim comer (for the room had no save that which came The lookwhich I received from thepolice light man convinced me thatmy ears had not through the doorway where I stood) lay the formof a woman under a fallen of fur played me false. piece niture. Her skirtsand distended arms alone "The Lady's right,"he declared; and push were but no one who saw the ing by me quite disrespectfully, he led the visible; rigid a mo way to the basement door, intowhich he and outlines of her limbs could doubt for ment that she was dead. the so-called cleaner presently disappeared. At a so in of all Iwaited in front. I felt it to be my duty to sight dreadful, and, spite so I felt a do so. The various passers-by stopped an in my apprehensions, unexpected, sensation of sickness which in another mo stant to stare at me before proceeding on ment have ended in theirway, but I did not flinch frommy post. might my faintingalso, if I had not that itwould never do Not till I had heard that the young woman realized whom I had seen enter these doors at mid forme to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too of his own. So night was well, and that her delay in open many I shook off and ing thewindows was entirely due to fashion my momentary weakness, to the who was able laziness, would I feel justified in return turning policeman, hesitating between the unconscious of the wo ing tomy own home and itsaffairs. But ittook figure man outside the door and the dead formof patience and some courage to remain there.. .. the one within I cried sharply: ... to business! The woman in Iwas beginning to feel Iwas paying "Come, man, side there is but thisone is Fetch dearly formy virtuous resolution, when the dead, living. me a of water frombelow if frontdoor burst violentlyopen and we caught pitcher you can, and then for whatever assistance sightof the trembling formand shocked face go you of the scrub-woman. need. I'llwait here and bring thiswoman to. a "She's dead!" she cried, "she's dead! She is strong one, and itwon't take long." Murder!" and would have said more had not "You'll stay here alone with that?" he But I him with a the policeman pulled her back, with a growl began. stopped look of dis which sounded very much like a suppress dain. ed oath. "Of course I will stay here; why not? Is He would have shut the door upon me there anything in the dead to be afraid of? Save me from the and I undertake to had I not been quicker than lightning.As it living, save from the dead." was, I got inbefore itslammed, and happily myself too; for just at that moment the house

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