Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935)
Author of The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer's Story
About the Author
Image credit: c1870-90, Library of Congress
Series
Works by Anna Katharine Green
Delphi Complete Works of Anna Katharine Green US (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 11) (2017) 9 copies
Due iniziali soltanto... 2 copies
Anna Katherine Green - Mysteries Vol III - Millionaire Baby, Chief Legatee, & Woman in the Alcove (2009) 2 copies
Anna Katherine Green - Mysteries Vol II - House of the Whispering Pines, Initials Only, & Dark Hollow (2009) 2 copies
Purpurorkidéen : Detektivroman 2 copies
Detective Gryce, N. Y. P. D.: Volume: 1-The Leavenworth Case and That Affair Next Door (2011) 1 copy, 1 review
"An Intangible Clue" 1 copy
El casalot abandonat 1 copy
Risifi's Daughter: A Drama 1 copy
Vem var det 1 copy
Den försvunna bruden 1 copy
Ett hemlighetsfullt uppdrag 1 copy
Der Tag der Vergeltung 1 copy
THE FORSAKEN INN (A Gothic Murder Mystery): Intriguing Novel Featuring Dark Events Surrounding a Mysterious Murder (2017) 1 copy
The Mysteries Of Amelia Butterworth: That Affair Next Door, Lost Man's Lane and The Circular Study (2013) 1 copy
Anna Katherine Green - Mysteries Vol I - The Circular Study, The Golden Slipper, & The Hasty Arrow 1 copy
A Memorable Night 1 copy
Detective Gryce Mysteries 1 copy
Associated Works
The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime: Forgotten Cops and Private Eyes from the Time of Sherlock Holmes (2011) — Contributor — 218 copies, 3 reviews
The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories (2011) — Contributor — 162 copies, 5 reviews
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: A Collection of Victorian Detective Tales (2008) — Contributor — 141 copies, 1 review
In the Shadow of Agatha Christie: Classic Crime Fiction by Forgotten Female Writers, 1850-1917 (2018) — Contributor — 108 copies, 8 reviews
The World's Best One Hundred Detective Stories, Volume 9 (1929) — Contributor — 23 copies, 2 reviews
Sisters in Crime : Early Crime and Mystery Stories by Women (2013) — Contributor — 21 copies, 1 review
The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ®: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives (2014) — Contributor — 16 copies
International Short Stories, Volume 1: American Stories (1910) — Contributor; Contributor — 15 copies
Female Sleuths Megapack: Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, Loveday Brooke, and Amelia Butterworth (2014) — Contributor — 13 copies
Classic Crime Stories : 13 Tales from Edgar Allan Poe to Lawrence Block (2007) — Contributor — 5 copies
4 Detectives: Miss Madelyn Mack, Violet Strange, Miss Van Snoop, Florence Cusack (2012) — Contributor — 4 copies
The Lady Detectives: Four BBC Radio 4 Crime Dramatisations — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Rohlfs, Anna Katharine Green
- Birthdate
- 1846-11-11
- Date of death
- 1935-04-11
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- novelist
poet
detective novelist
mystery writer
crime novelist
short story writer - Relationships
- Rohlfs, Charles (husband)
- Short biography
- Anna Katharine Green was born in Brooklyn, New York to James Wilson Green, a lawyer, and his wife Catharine Ann Whitney. In 1866, she graduated from Ripley Female College (now Green Mountain College) in Poultney, Vermont. Her first published book was The Leavenworth Case (1878), a major success, now considered the first American detective novel. In 1884, she married Charles Rohlfs, an actor who later became an acclaimed furniture designer, with whom she collaborated on some of his designs. The couple had three children. She became a bestselling author, eventually publishing about 40 books during her career.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Place of death
- Buffalo, New York, USA
- Burial location
- Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, Erie County, New York, USA
- Map Location
- New York, USA
Members
Reviews
I’m saddened that this is Detective Ebeneezer Gryce’s last cooperation with Miss Amelia Butterworth — she, as nosy and interfering as ever — as these are the best of the dozen novels featuring Gryce. I’m even more saddened by how lackluster this overly melodramatic novel was.
The previous two Gryce-Butterworth novels, That Affair Next Door and Lost Man's Lane: A Second Episode in the Life of Amelia Butterworth, were delights! Slyly humorous comments on Gilded Age New York and some show more fun battle of wits between the octogenarian Gryce and the proud spinster still pepper this third novel pairing Gryce and Miss Butterworth, but the plot is ridiculous (a bad Miss Havisham re-imagining ) and needlessly complicated, and the ending, even more preposterous. I highly recommend That Affair Next Door and its sequel Lost Man’s Lane, but I’d skip The Circular Study. show less
The previous two Gryce-Butterworth novels, That Affair Next Door and Lost Man's Lane: A Second Episode in the Life of Amelia Butterworth, were delights! Slyly humorous comments on Gilded Age New York and some show more fun battle of wits between the octogenarian Gryce and the proud spinster still pepper this third novel pairing Gryce and Miss Butterworth, but the plot is ridiculous (
This short story was one of three in the Project Gutenberg version of "The House in the Mist."
A rather surprising suspense type of story... heroine lives next door to a man who keeps to himself and is known to be eccentric. She raises the alarm one day when his house is on fire, and then he starts to visit her, wham, he proposes and they get married.
Their relationship is actually a bit weird, I got some serious "Gaslight" vibes off it, if you know what I mean.
It's clear all the way through show more that she's rather afraid of him, but still has this kind of passive attachment. By the end you're supposed to believe that they're going to be OK, but I don't care, I'm thinking he still probably shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects, etc.
For me, Anna Katherine Green hit a false note in this story, because the guy's character was too easily redeemed. Misdeeds of his magnitude don't just get swept under the rug. Still, the suspense was pretty well done, and based on these three short stories, I would read more by this author. show less
A rather surprising suspense type of story... heroine lives next door to a man who keeps to himself and is known to be eccentric. She raises the alarm one day when his house is on fire, and then he starts to visit her, wham, he proposes and they get married.
Their relationship is actually a bit weird, I got some serious "Gaslight" vibes off it, if you know what I mean.
It's clear all the way through show more that she's rather afraid of him, but still has this kind of passive attachment. By the end you're supposed to believe that they're going to be OK, but I don't care, I'm thinking he still probably shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects, etc.
For me, Anna Katherine Green hit a false note in this story, because the guy's character was too easily redeemed. Misdeeds of his magnitude don't just get swept under the rug. Still, the suspense was pretty well done, and based on these three short stories, I would read more by this author. show less
High-society spinster Amelia Butterworth, a sharp-eyed inveterate busybody, notices some strange going-ons next door. The Van Burnams are in Europe, so why are a young man and lady entering the house? Miss Butterworth soon gets the police — and herself — involved in what turns out to be murder.
Author Anna Katherine Green’s novel has plenty of twists, but the best part is the slyly humorous portrayal of Amelia Butterworth herself: pushy, snobbish, bumptious, priggish and completely show more lacking in self-awareness. She’s inadvertently funny without ever realizing it. Just one example: Miss Butterworth sees herself as “an energetic woman with a special genius for [the police’s] particular calling.” Her young neighbors, Caroline and Isabella Van Burnam, refer to her as the ogress behind her back (which the snoopy Amelia overhears). You make the call as to who got it right.However, her adventures in this affair teach Miss Butterworth a bit of humility and soften her “adamite heart,” and I really look forward to her next adventure in Lost Man's Lane: A Second Episode in the Life of Amelia Butterworth.
I read Green’s first novel, (first published in 1876), The Leavenworth Casewhich was pretty mediocre, with stilted writing and several implausible characters and events. However, The Affair Next Door, first published 21 years later, proves a well-plotted novel that had me smiling and enjoying characters with lots of depths. Special thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for reissuing this fine novel.
Although her name’s hardly known, Anna Katherine Green influenced quite a few of the greats: Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie and Patrician Wentworth. Green has been called “the mother of the detective novel.” The excellent The Affair Next Door shows why.
In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review. show less
Author Anna Katherine Green’s novel has plenty of twists, but the best part is the slyly humorous portrayal of Amelia Butterworth herself: pushy, snobbish, bumptious, priggish and completely show more lacking in self-awareness. She’s inadvertently funny without ever realizing it. Just one example: Miss Butterworth sees herself as “an energetic woman with a special genius for [the police’s] particular calling.” Her young neighbors, Caroline and Isabella Van Burnam, refer to her as the ogress behind her back (which the snoopy Amelia overhears). You make the call as to who got it right.
I read Green’s first novel, (first published in 1876), The Leavenworth Casewhich was pretty mediocre, with stilted writing and several implausible characters and events. However, The Affair Next Door, first published 21 years later, proves a well-plotted novel that had me smiling and enjoying characters with lots of depths. Special thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for reissuing this fine novel.
Although her name’s hardly known, Anna Katherine Green influenced quite a few of the greats: Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie and Patrician Wentworth. Green has been called “the mother of the detective novel.” The excellent The Affair Next Door shows why.
In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review. show less
I’m glad that British Library and Poisoned Pen Press have reissued what critics call Anna Katherine Green’s finest work, her first novel The Leavenworth Case. Published in 1878, it predates Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, and Israel Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery. In short, Green’s detective novel is one of the first.
But I’m glad more for historical reasons than enjoyment. I loved Green’s Violet Strange stories, but this show more earliest work proves mediocre. The novel is narrated by young lawyer Everett Raymond, a man superficial, priggish and naïve to the point of fecklessness. How feckless? Here’s Raymond being questioned by New York Metropolitan police detective Ebeneezer Gryce on his presence when a woman, an important witness in a murder case, scribbled a letter in Raymond’s very presence:
What a blockhead! Just to seal the deal, Raymond insists that no refined woman could have shot the victim to death. As Gryce sardonically points out, one has only to read the newspaper to discover that pretty ladies can commit some ugly crimes.
I can only hope that Green was satirizing the Victorian notion of gentility, but I doubt that to be the case. Predictably, Raymond decides, based only on pretty looks, that the female suspect could not possibly be guilty, and he ventures on from there to try to prove her innocence. How much better this novel would have been if it had dispensed with Raymond and focused on Gryce and his master-of-disguise sidekick, Morris (nicknamed Q for “query” )!
Lastly, Green does not always play fair with clues, especially at the novel’s end.
The Leavenworth Case is definitely worth reading, if only to get a taste of early Victorian detective fiction; however, readers should keep their expectations in check.
In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, British Library and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review. show less
But I’m glad more for historical reasons than enjoyment. I loved Green’s Violet Strange stories, but this show more earliest work proves mediocre. The novel is narrated by young lawyer Everett Raymond, a man superficial, priggish and naïve to the point of fecklessness. How feckless? Here’s Raymond being questioned by New York Metropolitan police detective Ebeneezer Gryce on his presence when a woman, an important witness in a murder case, scribbled a letter in Raymond’s very presence:
“You never thought to look at its superscription before it was dropped into the box.”
“I had neither opportunity nor right to do so.”
“Was it not written in your presence?”
“It was.”
“And you never regarded the affair as worth your attention?”
“However I may have regarded it, I did not see how I could prevent Miss Leavenworth from dropping a letter into a box if she chose to do so.”
“That is because you are a gentleman. Well, it has its disadvantages,” he muttered broodingly.
What a blockhead! Just to seal the deal, Raymond insists that no refined woman could have shot the victim to death. As Gryce sardonically points out, one has only to read the newspaper to discover that pretty ladies can commit some ugly crimes.
I can only hope that Green was satirizing the Victorian notion of gentility, but I doubt that to be the case. Predictably, Raymond decides, based only on pretty looks, that the female suspect could not possibly be guilty, and he ventures on from there to try to prove her innocence. How much better this novel would have been if it had dispensed with Raymond and focused on Gryce and his master-of-disguise sidekick, Morris (nicknamed Q for “query” )!
Lastly, Green does not always play fair with clues, especially at the novel’s end.
The Leavenworth Case is definitely worth reading, if only to get a taste of early Victorian detective fiction; however, readers should keep their expectations in check.
In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, British Library and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review. show less
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 95
- Also by
- 35
- Members
- 2,457
- Popularity
- #10,432
- Rating
- 3.4
- Reviews
- 94
- ISBNs
- 883
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
- 2
