Little Scholarz World's Famous Crime Stories (S-182)

The earliest known crime fiction is Thomas Skinner Sturr's anonymous Richmond, or stories in the life of a Bow Street officer (1827); the earliest full-length novel in the genre is The Rector of Veilbye by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher, published in 1829. Better known are the earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe (e.g., "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842), and "The Purloined Letter" (1844)). Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Woman in White was published in 1860, while The Moonstone (1868) is often thought to be his masterpiece. French author Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq (1868) laid the groundwork for the methodical, scientifically minded detective.