Today, the mystery sub-genre of historical fiction is one of the most successful areas of popular fiction. However, it took a surprising amount of time to come into being. For instance, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote a number of historical novels, yet he apparently never even thought of setting a detective story in the past. Oddly enough, Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle, did write some Sherlock Holmes stories that were genuine historical mystery tales.
The very first historical mystery novel was 1905's The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. The hero of this nvel was Sir Percy Blakeney who used detective skills to succeed as a secret agent. However, Orczy never creaed a regular detective character despire a writing career that went on for several more decades.
The first historical mystery character created by an American was Uncle Abner. This was the creation of Melville Davisson Post, a lawyer whose detective hero was a morally strong upright man who always strove to do the right thing. Despite the success of this character, Uncle Abner would remain the only maor historical detective character in print for over three decades.
Then during the 1940's, the American college professor and mystery writer Lillian de la Torre came up with the idea of creating mystery stories using the Eighteenth Century figures Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell as detectives. Agatha Christie became intrigued by these stories and with the encouragement of her egyptologist friend Dr. Stephen Glanville, wrote the first ever historical mystery novel, Death Comes as the End. This in turn, helped inspire Josephine Tey to write what has been called the greatest mystery novel of all time, The Daughter of Time
Following the publication of these two novels, more and more writers became attracted to this sub-genre. And yet, the historical mystery failed to become a major part of popular fiction for aother quarter centry.
The historical mystery sub-genre did not really get going until the creation of the medieval Welsh clergyman/detective Brother Cadfael. Back in the Bicentennial year of 1976, a very prim and proper British writer named Edith Pargeter came up with the idea for creating a series of historical mystery novels about a Medieval Welsh clergyman named Brother Cadfael. She came up with the idea from a lifelong interest in Welsh history, especially the Dark Ages & the Middle Ages. However, the author's main interest was in writing a murder mystery with a historical setting rather than a straight historical novel.
Towards that end, Pargeter came up with a pseudonym to write these historical mysteries under. As "Ellis Peters," the series was a success. Part of the reason for this success was the fact that she deliberately picked a name that was very unusual for a Welshman to have. This way, her fictional detective would not be confused with any actual historical figures. The stage was now set for her to weave fiction into fact without distorting history.
The success that the Cadfael series have enjoyed, including a high grade British TV series starring Derek Jacobi, paved the way for other authors to enter the burgeoning mystery sub-genre of historical fiction. This growth of this particular field shows no signs of slackening.
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