Green, Anna Katharine (1846–1935)

American writer who was called the mother of detective fiction. Name variations: Anna Katharine Green Rohlfs; Mrs. Rohlfs. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 11, 1846; died in Buffalo, New York, on April 11, 1935; daughter of James Wilson (a lawyer) and Katharine Ann (Whitney) Green; attended public school in Brooklyn and Buffalo, New York; Ripley Female College (now Green Mountain College), Poultney, Vermont, B.A., 1866; married Charles Rohlfs (an actor turned designer), in November 1884; children: a daughter and two sons.

Selected works:

The Leavenworth Case (1878); A Strange Disappearance (1880); The Defense of the Bride and Other Poems (1882); Hand and Ring (1883); Marked "Personal" (1893); The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock (1895); That Affair Next Door (1897); Lost Man's Lane (1898); Agatha Webb (1899); The Circular Study (1900); The Filigree Ball (1903); The House in the Mist (1905); The Millionaire Baby (1905); The Amethyst Box (1905); The Woman in the Alcove (1906); The Chief Legatee (1906); The Mayor's Wife (1907); The House of the Whispering Pines (1910); Initials Only (1911); Masterpieces of Mystery (1913, reissued in 1919 as Room Number Three and Other Detective Stories); The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917); The Step on the Stair (1923).

Anna Katharine Green, who is credited with developing the American detective story, had hoped to become a poet and was encouraged in college by a meeting with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who evidently responded favorably to some of her early efforts in verse. Curious, then, was the appearance of her first book, The Leavenworth Case (1878), a detective story, which turned out to be a runaway hit, selling over 150,000 copies. Green's only predecessors in the genre were Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins, and her fictional detective Ebenezer Gryce anticipated the later Sherlock Holmes by nearly a decade. Green's first hit was followed by A Strange Dis-appearance (1880) and Hand and Ring (1883). When her two volumes of verse, The Defense of the Bride and other Poems (1882) and Risifi's Daughter (1887), failed to gain recognition, she returned to detective stories with alacrity. Although Green's novels were not by any means distinguished literature, they were tightly plotted, well-constructed, and extremely popular. Her knowledge of criminal law, which she obtained from her father, kept her stories within the bounds of probability, an absolute necessity in any good mystery, she believed. Also essential, she thought, was an interesting plot with a twist, and a narrative that rises steadily to a climax that surprises the reader. The formula she developed continues to dominate the genre.

Green was described as a shy, mild-mannered woman who enjoyed a quiet life in Buffalo, New York, with her husband and three children. She was married to Charles Rohlfs, an actor turned furniture designer, who later became known for his art nouveau designs. During his acting days, Rohlfs played in a dramatization of The Leavenworth Case, a performance that sparked such renewed interest in the book that a second edition was brought out in 1934. Anna Katharine Green died on April 11, 1935, in her 89th year.