Anna Katharine Green Biography

Anna Katherine Green was an American poet and novelist, famously dubbed as the ‘Mother of the detective novel’. With such memorable characters as detective Ebenezer Gryce, and the spinster Amelia Butterworth, she successfully used many of the genres' plot devices—such as expert witnesses, medical inquiry, dead bodies found at unexpected places—to weave gripping stories . Her knowledge of criminal law, gained from her lawyer father, helped give an air of realism to the novels, and her books helped outline the formulas that were to characterize the field of detective fiction. She was a progressive woman for her time who succeeded in a genre dominated by male writers but she was opposed to women's suffrage and she did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries. She had personal responsibilities and raised a family, but still managed to turn out more than three dozen books over a span of four decades. She helped to make the genre of detective fiction popular in America by creating well-constructed plots based on a good knowledge of criminal law. Her fictional detective, Ebenezer Gryce, influenced in some aspects the character of Sherlock Holmes created later by Arthur Conan Doyle. Her expert detailing of the logical procedure through discovery of possibilities, deduction, and reasoning won her readership all around the world.