Anna Katherine Green

Anna Katharine Green (18461935) was an American poet and novelist but achieved fame for being among the first writers of detective fiction in America. Her crime writing was well plotted, legally and procedurally and she became a bestselling author.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, her early ambition was to write romantic poetry, and she corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson. But after her poetry failed to gain recognition, she produced her first and best-known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878) with which she became a bestselling author, eventually publishing about 40 books. She was notable for succeeding in a genre dominated by male writers, but she did not approve of many of her feminist contemporaries, and she was opposed to women's suffrage. Her other works include A Strange Disappearance (1880), The Affair Next Door (1897), The Circular Study (1902), The Filigree Ball (1903), The Millionaire Baby (1905), The House in the Mist (1905), The Woman in the Alcove (1906), The House of the Whispering Pines (1910), Initials Only (1912), and The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917).