Thread by @jessnevins

Good morning! As promised, my Twitter thread on the first lesbian detective in mystery fiction. (cc: @jeannette_ng & @laura_hudson ). But before I get to her, some literary & historical context is necessary.

Sorry—this is going to be a long one. 1/

The first *out* lesbian detective is Helen Kermos, from Eve Zaremba's WORK FOR A MILLION, from 1986, which seems late but is in fact the correct year. (Graphic novel of WORK FOR A MILLION coming out next January [bedsidepress.com/product/work-f…] by @amandadeibert and @selenagoulding). 2/

The world of fiction wasn't ready for an out lesbian detective before then. What the world did have, a century before, was Hilda Serene, a lesbian detective who, typical for gay and lesbian and trans characters of the era, was out to knowledgeable readers without being *out*. 3/

But some context & history is necessary to truly understand and appreciate Hilda Serene.

Historians of detective fiction point to Voltaire's ZADIG (1747) as the start of what I call the Proto-Mysteries, stories which had mystery elements without actually being mysteries. 4/

The first Gothic novel was Horace Walpole’s THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO (1764)—a landmark work in a couple of respects--and only five years later, in the various women’s periodicals of the time, women authors began publishing Gothic stories featuring female protagonists. 5/

Now, OTRANTO is the first major Gothic. The second was Ann Radcliffe’s THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO (1794), which was enormously influential and more or less reified the Gothic genre as primarily a novel genre. UDOLPHO also established the “female Gothic” novel. 6/

In female Gothics--the majority of what we think of as the traditional Gothic--the plot is a coming-of-age story about a young woman who is threatened & pursued by a sexually predatory male who tries to prevent her from solving a mystery tied to her patrimony or legacy. 7/

The female protagonists are, in essence, trying to solve a crime, the crime(s) that prevented her from gaining the knowledge and/or wealth that was rightfully hers. (Female Gothics = men bad. Male Gothics = men bad except for the male protagonist). 8/

The female Gothic's lifespan ran roughly 25 years. It made novel writing the province of female authors rather than male authors, as was the case pre-1770 & post-1820; & it provided later authors w/the character type of the mystery-solving woman. Radcliffe & UDOLPHO did that. 9/

The female Gothic petered out in 1820, with Charles Maturin’s MELMOTH THE WANDERER providing the death-blow. But in 1819 ETA Hoffmann wrote "Mademoiselle de Scudéry" (catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/1003207…) the first major Proto-Mystery story with a female protagonist. 10/

Mlle. de S. is--arguably--a crime-solver, and--again, arguably (critics differ about this) the first female amateur detective and the first elderly female amateur detective. Hoffmann was a significant author during his heyday & "Mlle. de Scudéry" attracted a lot of attention. 11/

Traditional histories of mysteries make it sound like there was nothing between "Mlle de Scudéry" & the first Edgar Allan Poe mystery in 1841. But as the Westminster Detective Library (wdl.mcdaniel.edu) shows, there were 31 (at least) mysteries published 1819 & 1841. 12/

Some of those 31 stories had female crime-solvers, like William Burton's "The Secret Cell" (1837; wdl.mcdaniel.edu/node/12).

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Poe revolutionized crime fiction & as Westminster Detective Library shows inspired 100s of detective & mystery stories between 1845 (date of Poe's last C. Auguste Dupin mysteries) & 1891 (when Sherlock Holmes hit the big time). A number of those stories had female detectives. 14/

[sidenote: I'm speaking of US/UK mystery fiction. German mystery fiction tradition is older than the US/UK's & stronger & deeper in the 19th century. Germans prbly had 19th century female crime-solvers that we don't know about because the stories have never been translated. 15/

Usually, with sff, it's safe to say that the French got there first. With detective & mystery fiction, it's safe to say that it was the Germans who did it first]. 16/

The 1850s were a period of stories in imitation of Poe and the MEMOIRS (1829) of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8… Eugene Francois Vidocq, criminal-turned-head-of-the-Surete who wrote in his MEMOIRS about his infallible ways and means for defeating criminals. 16/

Two things of note for the decade: in 1851 Charles Dickens does a ride along with British police Inspector Charles Frederick Field, resulting in the article "On Duty With Inspector Field," which drew huge numbers of readers into the world of police work for the first time. 17/

British public pre-"On Duty": police suck! Incompetent and corrupt! British public post-"On Duty": they're good lads doing a hard job. (The former was the more accurate judgment of the two). 18/

Then, in 1852-1853, Dickens publishes BLEAK HOUSE, which in addition to being critically acclaimed ("the greatest novel of the nineteenth century," etc) features police Inspector Bucket. Imitations of Bucket followed in both America & Britain--but never female imitations. 19/

In 1856 Charles Field retires from Scotland Yard & forms his own private detective agency--the 1st of note in the UK. Field often appears in the newspapers in this role--the 1st major private detective of real life--& becomes a living example of the detective character. 20/

Starting in 1860 female private detectives (the idea was an obvious twist on the concept of the male private detective which Field was popularizing) begin appearing on stage in the US & UK, in plays with names like "The Female Detective" and "The Lady Detective." 21/

In 1864 J. Redding Ware publishes THE FEMALE DETECTIVE in the UK, the 1st fictional collection of stories with a female detective protagonist. Six months later comes William Stephens Hayward's REVELATIONS OF A FEMALE DETECTIVE. The fictional female private eye was born. 22/

A year after that interesting happens. In 1865, almost immediately after the end of the American Civil War--and I mean within a few weeks after the war ended on April 9--US department stores began hiring female floorwalkers to capture shoplifters and petty criminals. 23/

These women had the legal authority to detain & arrest criminals & had the full support of the law if they had to get physical in doing so. This, much more than Kate Warne's (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Warne) service w/Pinkertons, promoted concept of women-as-detectives in real life. 24/

By the end of the 1860s you had, in real life, female private detectives, working for agencies or founding agencies themselves.

Women weren't allowed to become policemen, of course. BUT as early as 1870 police depts were informally hiring women to solve "women's crimes."
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These women "police agents" would bust abortionists and abusive husbands and shoplifters, etc, and had the authority to arrest both men and women. But the women weren't officially police and didn't get to wear the uniform, etc. The Brooklyn P.D. started doing this in 1873. 26/

Throughout the 1870s you've got surging numbers of female private eyes, in fiction and in reality. Boston, NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia--most of the major and many of the minor cities east of the Mississippi had female private detectives working in them. 27/

Lewiston, Maine, a flourishing mill city and home to Bates College (Bobcats represent!), even had a female private detective in 1885. ('Down these mean forest paths a woman must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid. She is a hero; she is everything.") 28/

The press coverage of fictional female detectives was mostly sympathetic, though in (unsurprisingly) patronizing & condescending ways. Reviews would praise the (usually male) writer and the character while still finding the whole idea of a female detective curious & peculiar. 29/

Press coverage of real-life female detectives was split between straight reportage, in the more respectable papers like the NEW YORK TIMES, and something much more sexist in the tabloids and penny papers. 30/

Typical of the reportage was how the New York Times covered the exploits and obituary of Margaret Jane Thomas (c. 1845-1895), who ran a one-woman private detective agency out of the back of the shirt shop she and her husband owned in Brooklyn. (I'm writing a novel about her). 31/

Thomas worked as a detective from 1877-1895, specializing in wills & divorce cases; when she died, the New York Times described her as "well-known in Brooklyn as 'The Female Detective.'" Very respectful coverage. 32/

(I don't have access to the New York Times' archive right now, otherwise, I'd attach an image of the obituary here. But if you've got access, you can find it just by searching for the phrase "Margaret Jane Thomas") 33/

In the tabloids, however, female detectives were treated far, far worse. In rags like the NATIONAL POLICE GAZETTE (policegazette.us/national-polic…) women detectives--again, every one of them a private detective--were portrayed as

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vicious (because as everyone knew women didn't respect the rules of combat), as corrupt, as immoral, and as using sex to get information and capture their targets (because, as everyone knew, that was the only way a woman could do a man's job like being a private detective). 35/

And, of course, w/some of these women detectives, the GAZETTE went beyond "she spread her legs for a clue" to "she took salacious advantage of the suspect's wife!" We'll never know, at this chronological remove, how many of these female detectives were lesbians or bisexuals. 36/

Likely some of them, at least, were. But readers of the GAZETTE were treated to a non-stop parade of lesbian detectives. So the association of lesbians with female detectives became established in the American mindset in the 1870s and 1880s.
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I say the "American mindset." Although many of the readers of the NATIONAL POLICE GAZETTE were the equivalent of Fox News viewers, the GAZETTE's numbers were shockingly good, and many who couldn't read had the articles read to them. Even the upper classes read the GAZETTE.
38/

It was only a matter of time before someone wrote the lesbian detective into fiction. (apologies for taking so long to this point!)

Enter Albert W. Aiken, in 1889. Aiken (1846-1894) was an interesting character. 39/

By day he wrote dime novels, churning out thousands of pages about detectives and cowboys. By night he was a respected NYC playwright and actor. His dime novel stories were fairly standard, but he liked to write strong women--not Strong Female Characters, but strong women. 40/

For the Sept. 25, 1889 issue of NEW YORK DIME LIBRARY, which you can read here: dimenovels.lib.niu.edu/islandora/obje… , he wrote “The Actress Detective,” about an actress who turns amateur detective to capture the man who shot a fellow actor. 41/

(Warning: the actress, Hilda Serene, works for a pair of antisemitic stereotypes—Aiken was depressingly ordinary with regard to his prejudices).

Okay, brief break while I leave the reference desk!

42/

In premise Hilda Serene is not too dissimilar from the many other female detectives of dime novel fiction and the Sensation novels (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation…) of the 1850s & 1860s.

But Aiken almost immediately makes makes Serene different from her predecessors. 43/

Her best friend calls her “a strange man-woman…a great, big, horrid, dear, delightful masculine fighting girl.”

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Serene agrees with this assessment and says “I ought to have been a man; there is not the least doubt about that. All my tastes are masculine and not feminine, and the best proof of my assertion is the liking I have for the life of a detective."

45/

Later, Serene says (see image).

She’s a stout hand-to-hand fighter & boxer, and was raised on the Western frontier and always carries a revolver & a Bowie knife. The criminals describe her as “a man compounded with the magnetism of Cleopatra.” 46/

There had been “masculine” female detectives in the dime novels, but their stories were, 99% of the time, ruined by what critic Kathleen Gregory Klein called “the marriage plot.” Quoting from my Victorian encyclopedia:

47/

This happens over & over & *over* to the “masculine” female detectives. One of them escapes it by having her series cancelled before the handcuffs of marriage can be slapped on her wrists--the series was trending in that direction, but got cancelled before it was official. 48/

Hilda Serene escapes it, too. She admits to never having been in love by age twenty-eight, and when the story’s putative love interest asks her to marry him, she is kind to him but does not accept his proposal: 49/

“All my tastes are masculine.” “…grew up more like a boy than a girl.” “I am perfectly satisfied that I shall never love you nor any other man.” “Let us be friends.”

50/

Now, Albert Aiken, author of this story, was as mentioned a respected playwright and author in New York City in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. He would have known bisexual or lesbian women in the world of theater if not in the city itself. (Hard to believe, I know, but true). 51/

And he would have known about the same-sex affairs of world-famous actresses like Sarah Bernhardt (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Ber…) and Eleonara Duse (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleonora_…). Bernhardt & Duse were widely gossiped about, verbally and in print. *Everyone* knew about them. 51/

It defies logic for Aiken to have been ignorant of lesbians. And it defies logic for Aiken to have been ignorant of the idea of lesbian detectives—the NATIONAL POLICE GAZETTE was *very* widely read. 52/

Only logical conclusion is that Aiken knew what he was doing when he had Serene say that her tastes were masculine, that she’d never been in love w/a man & never would be, & that she’d rather be good friends w/a man than marry him. Aiken *intended* to make her a lesbian. 53/

He couldn’t give her a girlfriend, of course, & couldn’t call her a “lesbian” or “Tribad” in the text. The postal inspectors would never have allowed it. They had the power to prevent printed matter from being shipped through the mail, which was key to the dime novel business.54/

Ever since the cowboy dime novels of the 1870s and early 1880s got a little too pro-labor and pro-socialism for the government’s liking, the postal inspectors had cracked down hard on the dime novels if they were not conservatively correct. 55/

Being pro-labor was what the postal inspectors were mostly focused on, but any hint of sexual nonconformance would have brought the wrath of the inspectors down on the dime novel publishers. 56/

(You could always pay off the inspectors, as the publishers and managers of the stores sellers of gay porn published in the dime novel format did, but that’s a story for another Twitter thread).

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So Aiken couldn’t make Hilda Serene out. He did everything he could, short of that, to indicate to his audience that she was a lesbian, though, and the readers of his dime novels, who were also largely readers of the NATIONAL POLICE GAZETTE, understood what Aiken was implying 58/

Was Hilda Serene influential? Unfortunately not. The marriage plot held sway. There was no second Hilda Serene story, & Aiken's next female detectives ended up happily married or dead. And Aiken died in 1895--who knows what he might have written if not for the early death? 59/

BUT eight years later Anna Katherine Green, “the Mother of American Detective Fiction” & the first bestselling female author of detective fiction in America, started writing her Amelia Butterworth novels, and Butterworth is, like Hilda Serene, coded to be a lesbian. 60/

Anna Katherine Green, in 1878, began writing her Ebenezer Gryce mysteries, and coded him as gay (first fictional gay detective!). Green was married and hated the New Woman feminists, but apparently enjoyed writing gay & lesbian characters. Go figure. 61/

The first Amelia Butterworth novel, THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR (1897), is the informal beginning of lesbian detectives in mysteries in America. (Green was that influential). Hilda Serene counts as a significant predecessor, and the first lesbian detective in American fiction. 62/

Thanks for reading, everyone! I cover Aiken, Serene, Amelia Butterworth, and other lesbian detectives (and cowgirls and vampires and werewolves and writers) and many other topics in my forthcoming ebook THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASTIC VICTORIANA, SECOND EDITION. 63/

Next week: the first lesbian romance in Victorian fiction. (It’s either a lesbian romance or a trans love affair, depending on how you interpret the text). See you then! 64/64 (boy, this really become Jeet Heerian, didn't it? Sorry)