Fri 4 Mar 2011
When present day critics and historians look back at the Golden Age of Detection as it took shape in its British form, they almost never go beyond the four “Mystery Queens” of the era: Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh.
Curt Evans, a frequent guest blogger here on Mystery*File, accepts all four as “royalty,” but as you will know from his reviews and his followup comments on the reviews of others, he is a devoted champion of the male authors of the same time period, now deposed and all but relegated to the dustbins of the past.
In this regard, may I recommend to you a two part part series on The American Culture website, in which Curt takes on the present day one-sided view of the past? Names are named, and claims that have been made are hung up for inspection, analyzed and rejected.
And who are the Crime Kings of the era? Curt will tell you. His two-part essay is long, but it’s well worth your time and consideration.
March 4th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Thanks for reprinting this two part article, Steve. I’ve read many of the The Crime Kings but I’ve probably read even more from the works of the The Crime Queens. A very interesting argument that should generate many comments.
Personally, I have to admit to not paying that much attention to the gender of the writers. I’m just interested in reading the best mystery fiction but Curt certainly has written an excellent article.
March 4th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Curt
Congratulations on a well written, thought out, and persuasively stated piece on the subject.
I do so loathe revisionist historians who spew utter nonsense as fact and don’t have a clue as to the actual facts (like sales figures).
Thanks for fighting the good fight to actually express a few facts to counter all the either ignorant — or worse politically motivated — critics trying to rewrite genre history to fit their prejudice rather than actually stating some facts.
The funny thing is they end up short changing the writers they champion, for instance by failing to appreciate the transformation of Christie and Allingham from their early works to maturity.
March 6th, 2011 at 6:53 am
I do worry a bit some people will read me as this raging sexist now. One blogger (who seems like quite a nice person) already has stated that he finds my emphasis on gender in the article “slightly unpleasant” and “unfortunate at best” (I hate to think what the “at worst” would be!).
I’m not sure, however, that people who are unimmersed in these academic studies realize how much gender has been made an issue already. I don’t believe I’m the one doing it; I think I’m merely commenting on the phenomenon.
And these studies have influence. I regularly meet people who are surprised when you start talking about male British Golden Age detective fiction authors. And I’m not just talking about the “Humdrums”–although they are the most extreme example of literary banishment.
The fact is, you simply don’t have the comparable studies of the male writers (or, admittedly, women writers outside the Crime Queens: Christie, Sayers, Allingham, Marsh and sometimes Tey). The Crime Queens are often treated like they represent everyone else in Britain.
But do they? I’d argue if you look at Carr or Blake or Crofts or Street or Wade or the Coles or Edgar Wallace, you can get different different views of life (of course Carr was an American). The Crime Queens did not speak entirely for all the other writers of this period, just like the Hardboiled writers did not speak for (or to) everyone in the States.
It’s fundamentally ahistorical, it’s scholarship that’s less than it should be, to leave all these people out of the serious analyses. We’ve got to get beyond the simple Crime Queen construct. Academics needs to listen more to the “connoisseurs” (to use the term being used), who, yes, really do know something worth hearing.
March 6th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
I can’t speak for everyone who’s been following this and similar discussions here on this blog, Curt, only those who’ve left comments, all of whom understand what you are, and have been saying, and they (and I) are solidly behind you.
Unfortunately those who have left comments are uniformly male. I’m not sure why that is. I am tempted to say that this means that female mystery readers in general are not interested (or aware) of the history of the mystery novel, relatively speaking, but I can’t supply anything but anecdotal information to back up such a blanket statement as that.
March 6th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Steve, one commenter at Les Blatt’s Classic Mysteries blog (where he made kind mention of my piece) postulated that I seemed threatened by the success of women writers. Mercy!
If it wasn’t for Agatha Christie, I wouldn’t have gotten interested in mysteries, probably (I started reading her when I was eight years old, before I read Doyle–she is a milestone in my personal history of reading). On the net I’ve been a vocal defender of Christie for ten years.
I also like the other Crime Queens and would never deny that they are greatly important and deservedly admired. I just want people to understand (as I know is here) that there is more to British detective fiction in the Golden Age than aristocratic gentleman detectives and the brilliant women who fall in love with them over the course of several novels.
There were even benighted people back then who didn’t think Gaudy Night was a praiseworthy development in the mystery genre! I think it’s only fair that we give voice to other popular traditions, at least in scholarly studies. Academic scholarship should be about getting the period right, not catering to people’s comfortable misconceptions.
I know the novel of manners style is what’s most popular to readers of British Golden Age mystery and it will probably always remain that way, but our histories of the Golden Age should not be dictated by that.
I pointedly praised work by the Crime Queens, but to suggest they dominated the whole British Golden Age and that the whole period can be judged by their work alone is going too far.
It’s often said, for example, that Raymond Chandler hated the British Golden Age detective novel. That’s not true. He liked freeman and Crofts. He hated the books of the Crime Queens (especially the aristocratic detectives). Was he fair to the Crime Queens? I don’t think so. But this illustrates that the Crime Queens and the British Golden age detective novel were not historically synonymous.