Skip to main content
Grolier Club Exhibitions

References

One of the earliest books I read about collecting detective fiction was written by British bibliophile Eric Quayle (1921–2001). An oversized volume, The Collector’s Book of Detective Fiction (London: Studio Vista, 1972) was copiously illustrated, with many color plates of early and Golden Age detective fiction from Quayle’s own library. It served me not so much as a guide but as a wish book; when I first read it, I never thought I would be able to have any of these books, much less Quayle’s own copies. I read it sometime in the mid-1990s, well before I started collecting in this area, but it opened something within me that remained opened.  

Below are other books that I read from cover to cover, annotated and sticky-padded (I’ve never stooped to using a highlighter): 

  • Cardamone, Tom, editor. The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered. New York: Haiduk Press, 2010. 
  • Carter, John. “Detective Fiction” in New Paths in Book Collecting. London: Constable & Co., 1934. 
  • Cox, Don R. Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: AMS Press, 1998. 
  • Edwards, Martin. The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. London: British Library, 2017. 
  • Haycraft, Howard, editor. The Art of the Mystery Story. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946. 
  • Haycraft, Howard, editor. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1974. 
  • Kopley, Richard. Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 
  • Maida, Patricia D. Mother of Detective Fiction: The Life & Works of Anna Katharine Green. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1989.  
  • Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992. 
  • Murch, A. E. The Development of the Detective Novel. London: Peter Owen, 1958. 
  • Osborne, Eric, bibliographer. Victorian Detective Fiction: A Catalogue of the Collection Made by Dorothy Glover & Graham Greene, with a preface by Graham Greene and an introduction by John Carter.  London: The Bodley Head, 1966. 
  • Penzler, Otto. Mysterious Obsession: Memoirs of a Compulsive Collector. New York: The Mysterious Bookshop, 2019.  
  • Queen, Ellery. Queen’s Quorum. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1969.  
  • Randall, David A. Dukedom Large Enough: Reminiscences of a Rare Book Dealer, 1929–1956. New York: Random House, 1969. 
  • Sadleir, Michael. “Yellow-Backs” in John Carter, ed., New Paths in Book Collecting. London: Constable & Co., 1934. 
  • Symons, Julian. Mortal Consequences: A History from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.  
  • Thomson, H. Douglas. Masters of Mystery: A Study of the Detective Story. New York: Dover Publications, 1978. 
  • Wrong, E. M. “Introduction” in Crime and Detection. London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1926. 
References