The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
The Greatest Detective Stories: 1837-1914
Published on 4. June 2019
Book
Hardback
364 pages
978-1-64313-071-2 (ISBN)
Description
This masterful collection of seventeen classic mystery stories, dating from 1837 to 1914, traces the earliest history of popular detective fiction.
Today, the figure of Sherlock Holmes towers over detective fiction like a colossus-but it was not always so. Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin, the hero of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," anticipated Holmes' deductive reasoning by more than forty years. In A Study in Scarlet, the first of Holmes' adventures, Doyle acknowledged his debt to Poe-and to Emile Gaboriau, whose thief-turned-detective Monsieur Lecoq debuted in France twenty years earlier.
If Rue Morgue was the first true detective story in English, the title of the first full-length detective novel is more hotly contested. Among the possibilities are two books by Wilkie Collins-The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868)-Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Trail of the Serpent (1861) or Aurora Floyd (1862), and The Notting Hill Mystery (1862-3) by the pseudonymous "Charles Felix."
As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages-hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted "cozy" murders in Britain-and these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required the intelligence and clear-sightedness that characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured in these pages.
Today, the figure of Sherlock Holmes towers over detective fiction like a colossus-but it was not always so. Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin, the hero of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," anticipated Holmes' deductive reasoning by more than forty years. In A Study in Scarlet, the first of Holmes' adventures, Doyle acknowledged his debt to Poe-and to Emile Gaboriau, whose thief-turned-detective Monsieur Lecoq debuted in France twenty years earlier.
If Rue Morgue was the first true detective story in English, the title of the first full-length detective novel is more hotly contested. Among the possibilities are two books by Wilkie Collins-The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868)-Mary Elizabeth Braddon's The Trail of the Serpent (1861) or Aurora Floyd (1862), and The Notting Hill Mystery (1862-3) by the pseudonymous "Charles Felix."
As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages-hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted "cozy" murders in Britain-and these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required the intelligence and clear-sightedness that characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured in these pages.
Reviews / Votes
"The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Graeme Davis, features exploits of both the great detective's predecessors-such as Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin-and his numerous literary progeny, including R. Austin Freeman's scientific Dr. Thorndyke and Ernest Bramah's blind Max Carrados. Holmes authority Leslie S. Klinger opens the anthology with a generous background essay, after which Davis reprints a variety of excellent stories." -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post * "Davis's collection offers the pleasure of undiscovered countries." * Booklist * "A welcome addition to early English detective fiction anthologies. Solid entries will be new to many." * Publishers Weekly *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Edition type
Annotated edition
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
564 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64313-071-2 (9781643130712)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Graeme Davis
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
E-Book
06/2019
1st Edition
Simon + Schuster Inc.
€16.80
Available for download
Persons
Graeme Davis has been fascinated by horror fiction since his teens, devouring late-night reruns of the classic Universal and Hammer movies on his parents' black-and-white TV and stripping local thrift-stores of horror titles. He began writing for tabletop role-playing games in the early 1980s, and among many other credits he helped develop Games Workshop's blockbuster Warhammer dark-fantasy franchise and the 90s Gothic hit Vampire: The Masquerade, as well as more than 40 electronic games. This is his second anthology for Pegasus, following on from the 2017 collection Colonial Horrors. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado.
Leslie S. Klinger is the editor of the highly-acclaimed The New Annotated Dracula; The New Annotated Frankenstein; and the two-volume The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, as well as the anthologies In the Shadow of Dracula and In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe. Together with Lisa Morton, he's also edited the anthologies Ghost Stories and Weird Women, both with extensive selections of Victorian horror. He lives in Malibu.
Leslie S. Klinger is the editor of the highly-acclaimed The New Annotated Dracula; The New Annotated Frankenstein; and the two-volume The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, as well as the anthologies In the Shadow of Dracula and In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe. Together with Lisa Morton, he's also edited the anthologies Ghost Stories and Weird Women, both with extensive selections of Victorian horror. He lives in Malibu.