Anna Katharine Green

Anna Katherine Green (1846-1935), American author of mysteries wrote The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer's Story (1878).

With such memorable detectives as Ebenezer Gryce, New York City police officer and spinster sleuth Amelia Butterworth, Green successfully uses many of the genres' plot devices such as expert witnesses, medical inquiry, dead bodies found in libraries, and ballistics experts to find weapons. Her expert detailing of the logical procedure through discovery of possibilities, deduction, and reasoning won her readership all over North America and Europe. She maintained a correspondence with Ralph Waldo Emerson, admired Émile Gaboriau, and influenced Agatha Christie.

Anna Katherine Green was born on 11 November 1846 in Brooklyn, New York to parents Catharine Ann Whitney and James Wilson Green, lawyer. No doubt his career had an influence on his daughter's, who took early to writing poetry and short stories. In 1866 Green graduated from Ripley Female College in Poultney, Vermont, then moved back to New York to live with her extended family. The Leavenworth Case: A Lawyer's Story was published, followed by A Strange Disappearance (1880). After the success of Leavenworth Green had the confidence to submit her The Defense of the Bride and Other Poems (1882) to publishers though it did not receive the attention her detective novels achieved.

In 1884 Green married Charles Rohlfs, who would become an internationally acclaimed furniture designer. A year later their daughter Rosamund was born (d.1930), their son Sterling in 1887, and in 1892 Roland was born. Green maintained a steady income during her prolific career and lived a Victorian life of strong values and morals, often reflected in her works. The family settled in Buffalo in the late 1880's. Anna Katherine Green died at home on 11 April 1935.

Other Green titles include:
The Mill Mystery (1886),
her dramatic play Risifi's Daughter (1887),
The Forsaken Inn (1890),
Miss Hurd: An Enigma (1894),
That Affair Next Door (1897),
Agatha Webb (1899),
The Filigree Ball (1903),
The Millionaire Baby (1905),
The Sward of Damocles (1909),
Initials Only (1911),
Dark Hollow (1914),
The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange (1915),
and her last novel The Step on the Stair (1923).

Biography written by C.D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc 2006. All Rights Reserved.

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