Fri 7 Jan 2011
A few weeks ago on this blog I posted a review/essay by J. F. Norris of The Notting Hill Mystery (1865), a book considered by many to be the first detective novel ever written. When it was serialized in one of the magazines of the day, the author was noted as “Anonymous.” When it appeared later in hardcover, someone named Charles Felix was given credit.
Who was Charles Felix? It’s been a mystery. “Felix” has long been known as a pen name, but who was the person behind the pseudonym? His was a name lost over the years, if it was ever known, and if so, forgotten by everyone since.
But no longer. We now know who done it. In this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section will be an essay by Paul Collins, who explains all:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/books/review/Collins-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
I won’t go into all of the detective work that Collins has done — you’ll have to read the full article to do that — but here’s the key paragraph:
“I’d almost given up when I stumbled upon a Literary Gossip column in The Manchester Times for May 14, 1864. The sole identification of Charles Felix had lain there for 146 years, hidden in this single sentence: ‘It is understood that Velvet Lawn, [another book known to have been written by] by Charles Felix, the new novel announced by Messrs. Saunders, Otley & Co., is by Mr. Charles Warren Adams, now the sole representative of that firm.’â€
The entry for The Notting Hill Mystery on Wikipedia has been updated to include this information. A link to John’s review on this blog appears at the bottom of the Wiki page.
January 8th, 2011 at 8:32 am
I’ll get this interesting article with Sunday’s NY Times and save it. Since this novel is important in the history of mystery fiction, I checked abebooks.com and ordered a copy of the anthology containing the novel. For those interested ABE still has one copy for $24 and amazon.com has copies of the paperback for the same price. If you are serious about detective and mystery fiction, this is a must buy.
January 8th, 2011 at 10:44 am
Allow me a bit of frat boy celebration: Woo-hoo! Do I have good taste and do I know my important works or what? We already drank a couple bottles of wine last night to carry on the festivities.
I know Paul Collins from several transactions he and I had when I was selling Harry Stephen Keeler books on eBay. He had become interested in Keeler back when there was a resurgence (around 2004-2006) in those books and Keeler articles were popping up all over the place both in newspapers and on-line. As a result Collins was responsible for reissuing THE RIDDLE OF THE TRAVELING SKULL via McSweeney – the literary journal and small press run by David Eggars.
I wonder if Collins is a reader of this blog and saw the review of NOTTING HILL MYSTERY and got interested in the mystery of Felix or had been researching this on his own all along. In any case, an absolutely thrilling case of synchronicity in the world of detective fiction.
I definitely will not be selling my copy of THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY and will keep it in a place of honor on my shelves.
John
January 8th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
That’s very interesting indeed! I think with the success of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, there’s a greater interest in Victorian crime fiction.
There’s one minor error in the article. Julian Symons did not first make his revelation about Notting in The Times in 1975, but in his the first edition of his influential genre survey Bloody Murder in 1972:
“There is no doubt that the first detective novel, preceding Collins and Gaboriau, was The Notting Hill Mystery. This was published in book form in 1865…but it first appeared in the magazine Once a Week [in 1862-1863]….Its primacy is thus unquestionable. So far as I know, the book remains unmentioned by any historian, although it was reprinted just after World War II in a collection of Victorian detective stories made by Maurice Richardson….[A]uthorship of the book is credited to Charles Felix. The name sounds like a pseudonym….”
….
“The story is interesting in itself, and the level of writing is far above current hack work, although equally far below that of Collins. But the essential point is that The Notting Hill Mystery is a true detective novel, and the first of its kind.”
January 9th, 2011 at 11:53 pm
[…] Last Friday on this blog I posted a preview announcement of an essay by Paul Collins in today’s New York Times Book Review section, in which he revealed the identity of the hitherto unknown author of The Notting Hill Mystery, described as the world’s first detective novel. The book version was published in 1865, but before that, the novel had appeared in serialized form in Once a Week magazine, beginning with the November 29, 1862, issue. […]
February 21st, 2011 at 12:19 pm
I could not read the Wiki-linked story, so I have republished the original with updated artwork and it is available in eBook form for kindle or on iTunes. Here is the Kindle link- you can search iTunes as well.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Notting-Hill-Mystery-ebook/dp/B004M18O9C/
Enjoy!