Anna Katharine Green

Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 – April 11, 1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first authors of detective fiction in the United States and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called "the mother of the detective novel".

Life and work

Green was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 11, 1846. She had an early ambition to write romantic verse and corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, she produced her first and best known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878), praised by Wilkie Collins. She became a bestselling author, eventually publishing 37 books over 40 years.

On November 25, 1884, Green married the actor and later noted furniture maker, Charles Rohlfs. Rohlfs toured in a dramatization of Green's The Leavenworth Case. After his theater career faltered, he became a furniture maker in 1897, and Green collaborated with him on some of his designs. Together they had one daughter and two sons: Rosamund Rohlfs, Roland Rohlfs, and Sterling Rohlfs.

Green died on April 11, 1935, in Buffalo, New York, at the age of 88. Her husband died the following year.

Critical response

Though Green's book The Leavenworth Case is frequently cited as the first mystery written by an American woman, The Dead Letter by Seeley Regester was published earlier (1866).

In a discussion of women writers of detective fiction, scholar Ellen Higgins in 1994 chronicled the work of Green as popularizing the genre a decade before Arthur Conan Doyle brought out his first Sherlock Holmes story. "I only found out afterward that some people were a little upset with it because they don't want to hear about women competing with the master", Higgins said.