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The beginning
The industrial revolution led to the spread of literacy. More people could read. -
The first stories
In the 17th and 18th centuries you can find a lot of stories about crime and mystery. A good example was William Goodwin's "Caleb Williams" (1794) because it resembles a crime story in many ways. -
The police force
London was a lawless city but the political idea of liberalism interfered with a force to uphold peace. It was however formed in 1829 and were accepted toward 1900. -
Edgar Allan Poe
This guy was the first to write crime fiction as we define it today. In the first of his 3 crime stories "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) he introduces the world to a lot of the typical elements of the crime stories. -
Charles Dickens
Was fascinated by crime. He examined the phychology of the criminals in his stories but was interested in the police too. He wrote "Bleak House" (1853) with one of the first fictional detectives. -
Wilkie Collins
Favoured the police and introduced a highly talented police detective in "The Moonstone" (1868). -
Conan Doyle
Writer of the "Sherlock Holmes" series. His series were an obvious continuation of E.A. Poe's ideas. We get to see a familier element in the detective in new stories, which creates a reunion joy. Sherlock Holmes is a very round character with a lot of dept. This is one of the areas, where Doyle differs from Poe. -
Success of Sherlock Holmes
Made a lot of writes try to write crime stories which lead to many new variants written in the beginning of the 20th century. -
The Golden Age
Around the 1920s and 1930s, a consensus and joint rules regarding the crime stories were defined. The focus of the story had to be the puzzle and the author had to show fair play to the readers. They had to get a chance to solve the mystery. The detectives became more human in this period. The period was dominated by Agathe Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. -
The American crime stories
The Americans really enjoyes the Britishness in the stories. But as the society changed in America, they reality in the British stories became too far from the actual reality. To new types of crime stories developed in USA in this time, the pulp magazine and the film -
Humphrey Bogart
The synonym of the hard boiled detective, who in contrast to Sherlock Holmes, was a modern day version of the western hero, the P.I. (private eye). -
Post-war period
Many new trends developed after the second world war. They could no longer be diveded into one overall description of the period. Some of the trends were: the psychological crime story, the socio-critical crime story, the crime story as a symbol, the new police story and the crime film. -
Why do we read crime fiction?
Many theories has been made about the subject. To give a short summary, some of the theories are psyhcological, social, anthropoligical and religious.