Influences and First Stirrings, 1824–1856
In the early nineteenth century, as printing became less expensive and the middle class grew in both America and Great Britain, the first stirrings of the public’s thirst for sensation became apparent with the publication of several supposedly true crime memoirs and collections. The word “detective” had yet to be invented. Most of these “true crime” books were highly sensationalized if not downright fictive. According to detective fiction historian E. M. Wrong, “it was sensation rather than reasoning that [the public] sought, and crude sensation is better provided by real crimes than by imaginary. So the detective story was left for modern times to develop into an art with a technique and a code of its own.”
Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin. The Newgate Calendar; Comprising Interesting Memoirs of the Most Notorious Characters Who Have Been Convicted of Outrage on the Laws of England, etc. London: J. Robins and Co., 1824-1828. 4 volumes.
The Newgate Calendar was one of the more popular “true crime” publications that began to whet the appetites of the newly middle-class reading public. These took a realistic view of the criminal, not as amusing or romantic but as a villain to be caught and punished. These books also became source material for writers of detective fiction.
William Leggett. “The Rifle” in The Atlantic Souvenir; A Christmas and New Year’s Offering. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, 1827.
The first appearance of the early detective story “The Rifle,” in which a prairie-man, Jim Buckthorne, uses his skills and knowledge of rifles to break down another man’s alibi and prove the innocence of a young doctor wrongly convicted of murder. The story was later collected in Leggett’s Tales and Sketches of a Country School Master and represents a very early attempt at amateur (but knowledgeable) sleuthing.
[Edward Bulwer-Lytton]. Pelham: or The Adventures of a Gentleman. London: Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street, 1828. 3 volumes.
Published anonymously, Pelham was an instant hit in London society. Well into the novel, the hero, Lord Pelham, becomes involved in a murder mystery and searches for clues to clear his best friend. Pelham may be the first sleuth to utter the phrase, “I am possessed of some clues” (A.E. Murch, 1958). Fellow Grolierite Richard Kopley wrote, “Unquestionably, Bulwer’s Pelham is a source for Poe’s first detective story, one that helped Poe – who had never been to France – elaborate a French setting and character.”
C[harles] MacFarlane. The Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers in All Parts of the World. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833. 2 volumes.
The first American edition of the book first published in London in the same year. This celebrated nineteenth-century rogue’s gallery was written by the prolific Scots novelist and travel writer Charles MacFarlane. Such highly fictionalized crime books whetted the public’s appetite for stories of crime and the “low life.”
“In the beginning there was guilt . . . . ” - Julian Symons
Eugène François Vidocq. Memoirs of Vidocq, Principal Agent of the French Police until 1827. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey & A. Hart and Baltimore: Carey, Hart & Co., 1834.
The first American edition of Vidocq’s “memoirs” is a translation of the original 1828 French book, written with the help of a ghostwriter. These memoirs, thought to be heavily fictionalized, were an inspiration to Edgar Allan Poe and other writers. Vidocq’s importance cannot be overstated: he was at first a criminal; then a police informant; eventually the head of the first detective force, Paris’s Sûreté Nationale; and then the head of the world’s first detective agency, Le Bureau des Renseignements. He used a laboratory to experiment with evidence, searched crime scenes, and investigated ballistics, all of which led many to consider him the father of criminology. According to his biographer, Philip J. Stern, it was Vidocq who “first struck the European imagination as the detective.” A Haycraft-Queen selection.
[Letterhead from Renseignements Universels (Information Bureau)], Paris, 1841.
An unusual survival, this piece of stationery from Vidocq’s office is postmarked March 25, 1841. The small print promises assistance in collecting debts and in commercial, civil, and criminal investigations.
[Anonymous]. Confessions, Trials, and Biographical Sketches of the Most Cold Blooded Murderers. Boston: George N. Thomson and E. Littlefield, 1839.
First published in the United States and subsequently in Great Britain, Confessions was one of the popular, fictionalized “true crime” accounts that continued to whet the public’s appetite for crime stories.
“Waters” [William Russell]. Recollections of a Detective Police Officer. London: J. & C. Brown, 1856.
One of the first and the most important of the detective “memoirs” in “yellow-back” form. This copy of a fragile book comes from the former, and extensive, detective fiction collection of Edward and Florence Kaye of New York. According to bibliographer Michael Sadlier in his 1934 essay “Yellow-Backs” in New Paths in Book Collecting, “the success of this book was immediate, and it was speedily and numerously imitated.” Yellow-backs were cheaply made editions typically for sale in railway bookstalls. Alexander Dumas had the book translated into French and published in Paris. Queen’s Quorum no. 2 and a Haycraft-Queen selection.