Thread by @jessnevins

Oh, why not, I'm not gonna make much headway with this manuscript while I'm at the reference desk.

Great Detectives, Cultural Imperialism, and You: A Brief Thread on Master Detectives.

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(drat, broke thread already)

What follows has nothing to do with the innate quality of the stories in which these Great Detectives appeared. I'm strictly talking about how popular & imitated these characters were.

(sidenote: buy @victorianclare's SHADOWS OF SHERLOCK).

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@victorianclare In the beginning was Vidocq.

Eugene Francois Vidocq (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8…). The most important figure in Parisian law enforcement (official & unofficial) for over thirty years. A nearly peerless self-aggrandizer. A master detective and brawler OR a criminal fraud OR both. 3/

@victorianclare Wiki calls Vidocq "father of modern criminology." (Well...maybe). More importantly for this thread, Vidocq's MEMOIRS (1828) gave France--and via the French publishing industry the world--the character type of the all-knowing detective, the master of all criminous situations. 4/

@victorianclare 13 years later came Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, influenced by Vidocq but (as would later be the case with Sherlock Holmes & Dupin) condescendingly dismissive of him in "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (pictured below).

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@victorianclare Poe was a much better writer than Vidocq, but for several decades it was Vidocq rather than Poe's Dupin who other writers around the world looked to as a character to be imitated. (The Vidocq of MEMOIRS is a character, a persona, certainly not the real thing).

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@victorianclare Mystery & detective fiction in the 19th century is more common in US/UK than globally, but many countries are developing their own mystery literatures.

(hey, btw, check this site out: wdl.mcdaniel.edu . A *peerless* resource for pre-Holmes detective fiction).
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@victorianclare Individual archetypes developed according to each particular nation--the Spanish gentleman amateur, the German inspector--but the shadow of Vidocq lay heavily on all of them. The fictional Vidocq was what people thought of as the archetypal Master Detective.
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@victorianclare Then, in 1887, the first of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries appears, and within a few years (Holmes didn't really take off until 1891, when he appeared in Strand magazine) Holmes supplanted Vidocq internationally as *the* Great Detective.

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@victorianclare (I'm ignoring Charles Field [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F…], Dickens' Inspector Bucket, and Collins' Sergeant Cuff because they weren't *internationally* influential. So too w/Henry Cauvain's Maximilien Heller (1871), who may have been a primary influence on Sherlock's creation). 10/

@victorianclare Now, you can certainly quibble about the quality of the Holmes stories, or w/Holmes himself. As Raymond Chandler himself said, Doyle "made mistakes which completely invalidated his stories...and Sherlock Holmes after all is mostly an attitude & a few dozen memorable lines.” 11/

@victorianclare But Holmes resonated. He was modern in a way his predecessors were not. He was vivid in a way previous detectives were not. He had It--fire, verve, brio--in ways his predecessors did not.

But until 1946 he was not the most imitated detective worldwide, or even in the UK. 12/

@victorianclare The problem, as far as the writers, publishers & readers of the world were concerned, was that Holmes solved crimes with his mind rather than his fists. Doyle's stories demanded that you pay attention. & Doyle's stories ran longer than magazines globally had the space for. 13/

@victorianclare Holmes was imitated--but never the most imitated.

Who was #1? For starters, Nick Carter.

Created by Ormond Smith & John Russell Coryell & debuting in 1886--before Sherlock--Carter was solidly in the fists-before-wits school of American dime novels detection. 14/

@victorianclare American dime novel detectives began appearing in the early 1860s, with some popular series characters appearing--detectives like Old Sleuth (responsible for popularizing "sleuth" as "detective), Old King Brady, & Old Cap. Collier. But none of them took off internationally.
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@victorianclare They didn't resonate because the stories weren't very good, because the system necessary to distribute the magazines they appeared in didn't exist yet, because they were too American, and because the stories were neither imaginative or colorful--too much of a sameness.

BRB!

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@victorianclare The stories with several of these characters did, for a while, have respectably leftist and even radical politics, though. The Old King Brady stories, for a time, were more politically radical than anything in detective novels, tv shows, or movies today. 17/

@victorianclare But our old friend Anthony Comstock (cc: @annaleen) put an end to that.

Sidebar: American female detectives of the 19th century were better than 19th century American male detectives in every way. Their story has yet to be fully told, although I'll be giving it a try soon. 18/

@victorianclare @Annaleen Anyhow, I'm straying, sorry.

In 1905, practically overnight, American dime novels become the hot international publishing commodity. And the heroes from those dime novels almost immediately become archetypes of their various genres. Buffalo Bill was #1. Nick Carter was #2. 19/

@victorianclare @Annaleen The reasons for the instant popularity of American dime novels in general & Nick Carter in particular are numerous. Suffice it to say (ala Charles Fort), it was Nick Carter Time.

The man mostly responsible for making Carter a global icon was Frederick van Rennselaer Dey.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen Among other things, Dey created the character the Shadow's creators ripped off to make the Shadow, created Hannibal Lecter 90 years early, & wrote some landmark Edisonade sf. But Dey will always be known for his Nick Carter stories. 21/

@victorianclare @Annaleen Dey wrote at least 1000 Nick Carter dime novels, some only 32 pages long but many running 150-200 pages, with a total word count of over forty million words. Dey did this every month *in longhand*, from 1891-1915.

What made Nick Carter so popular internationally?

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@victorianclare @Annaleen Dey was the first of the kitchen sink writers. Lost races? Intelligent gorillas? Superpowered villains? A Hogwarts-like school for detectives? A Doc Savage-like team of highly talented assistants & sidekicks? A Rogue's Gallery for the ages? Throw it all on the page! 23/

@victorianclare @Annaleen Every month, without fail, you'd get things like the first cyborg in fiction, criminals w/ names like "Ordway the Unaccountable Crook," sci-fi concepts mixed with detective plots on the Western frontier, and a positively delicious array of evil women intent on killing Carter. 24/

@victorianclare @Annaleen You can't really call the female villains of the Carter stories misogynistic, even--Dey clearly had so much fun writing them, they are obviously Carter's superiors (never mind other, ordinary, puny men), and in general they're all a delight to read.

And the names!

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@victorianclare @Annaleen Zanoni the Woman Wizard! Scylla the Sea Robber! Diana the Arch Demon! Inez Navarro, the Beautiful Devil! Madge Morley, The Dangerous Woman! On and on the list goes. All beautiful, all super-competent, & all bent on homiciding Nick Carter. Zanoni even bumped off Nick's wife. 26/

@victorianclare @Annaleen Plus they got to say stuff like this:

"Have no fear, my pretty man, my cornucopia of driveling goodness. When I make love to you, it will be to your articulated skeleton--to your empty, fleshless skull--to your heart preserved in alcohol and your liver thrown to the dogs."
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@victorianclare @Annaleen (If you're looking for the origin of the superhero genre, you can start with the Nick Carter stories as written by van Rensselaer Dey).

The important difference between Carter & Holmes is that while Carter isn't dumb, he solves crimes physically rather than mentally.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen That difference, and the imaginative content of the Carter stories, was what attracted global readers and inspired numerous imitations around the world in the 1905-1915 time period. Carter imitations gave readers high adventure and imaginative concepts & genre mash-ups.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen Street & Smith, the publishers of Nick Carter, ease van Rensselaer Dey out in 1915. He wanted too much money, and S&S thought he was replaceable. He wasn't, and they paid for it & regretted it later.

WW1 puts a dent in everyone's publishing schedule.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen The war ends. In 1919 the British publisher Amalgamated Press takes advantage of surging international interest in British story papers (UK equivalent to pulps) by pushing AP's magazines onto the world market.

Arguably their foremost character was detective Sexton Blake. 31/

@victorianclare @Annaleen Blake had been appearing since 1893. He'd begun as a typical story paper detective and went through various stages where he was an imitation of other people's characters, including Sherlock Holmes. He didn't start out as a Holmes lift, though. 32/

@victorianclare @Annaleen Starting in 1919, though, you've got a group of writers who cumulatively create the British version of Nick Carter: intelligent and game as far as detecting goes, but two-fisted and adventurous and opposed by a wonderful Rogues Gallery of villains.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen And some of the writers of the Sexton Blake stories--G.H. Teed, Gwyn Evans, and most of all George Norman Phillips under the pseudonym of "Anthony Skene"--were actually pretty good writers. Phillips in particular was very skilled at combining form with literary style.
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@victorianclare @Annaleen Blake becomes the new archetypal Great Detective, from 1919 up to 1939. Imitation Blakes appear around the world by the *hundreds*. I stopped counting at 750.

(Again, Blake offered actions & thrills, while Holmes made you think. No contest for most readers then and now).

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@victorianclare @Annaleen WW2 essentially killed off Sexton Blake, and after the war Amalgamated focused on publishing other characters. Lacking new stories about two-fisted Great Detectives, the writers & publishers of the world went back to Holmes, and he became the most imitated.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen What's grimly interesting to me about this is how the US & UK publishing industry, via international channels, essentially imprinted US & UK characters & concepts on to the readers of the world, & created imaginative & generic boundaries beyond which int'l authors didn't go. 37/

@victorianclare @Annaleen There were exceptions, of course. This sort of cultural imperialism & brainwashing is never fully successful. But for the most part the US & UK publishing industries succeeded in shaping and limiting how int'l authors & editors & publishers thought about their own detectives. 38/

@victorianclare @Annaleen There's probably a technical term for this, but: the US & UK publishing industries succeeded in convincing everyone else not only *what* to think about detectives, but *how* to think about detectives. The US/UK model became the int'l model--and all other models were invalid. 39/

@victorianclare @Annaleen The German national tradition of detectives--and you can plausibly trace it back to the 17th century--was destroyed by the US/UK models, Carter/Blake/Holmes. The Chinese tradition of detectives--Judge Dee, Judge Bao--was replaced by the US/UK detectives with Chinese names.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen In the great majority of the publishing houses of the world, deviations from the US/UK model were simply not to be tolerated, never mind printed.

Again, there are exceptions--check out the (few, sadly) detective stories of Nigerian/Onitsha market literature--but damn few.

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@victorianclare @Annaleen I'm not surprised US/UK histories of publishing and publishing houses don't delve into the realities, effects, and consequences of the publishing houses' historical behavior. Whitewashing ugly behavior is de rigueur in corporate histories, after all--always has been. 42/

@victorianclare @Annaleen The fact that, for example, Dennis Fucking Wheatley was the most popular horror author in Africa in the 1970s rather any of the African horror authors of the decade is treated as a curiosity rather than with the indignation it merits.
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@victorianclare @Annaleen Imperialism is a hell of a drug. 44/fin

@victorianclare @Annaleen Totally forgot to include this.

15 years ago my Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana was published by @chris_roberson & @allisontype. (Thanks to you both!)

Next year there'll be an expanded second edition, in which I talk about everything in this thread but at greater length.