I heard about The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Detective Stories on NPR this morning. Of course Wilkie Collins and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are represented in the collection. However the book also has detective fiction from classic authors that aren’t necessarily associated with the genre like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. Other stories in the collection are by authors that aren’t as well known today such as Anna Katharine Green and C. L. Pirkis.
Here’s what Amazon.com has to say:
From luminaries Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Bret Harte, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle to the forgotten author who helped inspire Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” to a surprising range of talented female authors and detectives, The Dead Witness offers mystery surprises from every direction. The 1866 title story, by Australian writer Mary Fortune, is the first known detective story by a woman, a suspenseful clue-strewn manhunt in the Outback. Pioneer writers Anna Katharine Green and C. L. Pirkis take you from high society New York to bustling London, introducing colorful detectives such as Violet Strange and Loveday Brooke.