The Art of Murder: Anna Katharine Green

Abstract

In 1883 American publisher George Putnam mailed a debut detective novel to Wilkie Collins. The book had been first published in 1878, and would have its English edition the following year. In modern publishing, sending a first novel to a famous writer would be to elicit a blurb endorsement. With Putnam it was more an act of homage, and Collins wrote back appreciatively. From the letter a sense of gracious generational change is gained. He did not regard the novice writer as a threat, and enjoyed her work: ‘Her powers of invention are so remarkable — she has so much imagination and so much belief (a most important qualification for our art) in what she writes, that I have nothing to report of myself, so far, but most sincere admiration.’ Putnam was so proud of this letter that he would reprint extracts from it in The Critic, 1893, in response to a paragraph disparaging women writers (Putnam, ‘Wilkie Collins’ 52).

Have I read ‘The Leavenworth Case’? I have read it through at one sitting.

Wilkie Collins to George Putnam