Designed for both mystery lovers and professors who teach detective fiction, this text examines the history of the genre from 1841 through 1940, a period which spawned some of its greatest writers. Taken together, the stories provide a chronological and thematic survey through a crucial period of the genre's initial development. The volume includes stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bret Harte, G. K. Chesterton, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Anna Katherine Green, Baroness Orzcy, Susan Glaspell, Carroll John Daly, Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich, Pauline Hopkins, Chester Himes, and Ralph Ellison.