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The Evolution of Crime Fiction - Coggle Diagram
The Evolution of Crime Fiction
18th Century (1700s)
1728:
Chaplains at London's Newgate Prison begin publishing printed accounts detailing prisoners' lives, crimes, confessions, and executions.
1749:
John and Henry Fielding establish the Bow Street Runners in London, introducing specialised "thief-takers" and systematically circulating crime facts and suspect descriptions.
1764:
Cesare Beccaria publishes "An Essay on Crime and Punishment", advocating for fixed proportions between crimes and penalties, due process, and the abolition of trial torture.
1773:
The Newgate Calendar is first published as a collection of inmate biographies used for moral warnings and social conditioning, undergoing major revisions in 1779, 1795, and 1800.
1789:
Jeremy Bentham publishes "Cases Unmeet for Punishment", replacing "crime" with "mischief" and arguing that punishments are ineffective, needless, or un profitable under specific conditions.
19th Century (1800s)
1811:
Eugéne Fancois Vidocq (an ex-convict) becomes the first chief of the "French Sureté" and later founds the first modern private detective gency in 1832, setting a precedent for criminal investigation and ex-convict detectives in literature.
1835:
Honoré de Balzac introduces the undercover criminal investigator character Vautrin in Pére Goriot, inspired by Vidocq's memoirs.
1835:
Edgar Allan Poe creates C. Augustine Dupin, widely recognised as the first fictional detective and the prototype of the analytical "genius detective".
1887:
An expert in physical disguises, chemistry and mathematics, Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet" calculates the "height of a man" using "length of his stride".
1891:
In the "Red Headed League", Holmes upholds evidence over conjecture and assumption. Reason, logic and rationality took precedence and thus, readers were attracted to mystery narratives that engaged their minds.This engagement with the narrative helped the genre flourish - the readers often tried to solve the crime, identifying themselves with the detective, as they read along the narrative.
20th Century (1900s)
1919-1933:
In response to "Prohibition and the Great Depression (1929 in the United States, the Hard-Boiled mode emerges, shifting focus toward urban violence, gangsterism, and organised crime.
1928-1929:
S. S. Van Dine publishes his "Twenty Rules" (1928) and Ronald Knox issues his "Decalogue" (1929) to formalise the Whodunit subgenre under the principle of "fair play" with the reader.
1934:
Agatha Christies publishes "Murder on the Orient Express", reflecting a broader post-WWI genre transition toward darker and more violent crimes.
1945:
Lawrence Treat publishes "V as in Victim", identified by critics as the first police procedural.
1951:
The radio and television broadcast "Dragnet" popularises realistic, team-based police routines.
1965:
John Ball publishes "In the Heart of the Night" (featuring Virgil Tibbs), introducing the first Black police detective as a procedural series protagonist.
1966:
Tzvetan Todorov publishes "The Typology of Detective Fiction", establishing sctructural categories for the Whodunit, Thriller, and Suspense.
1968-1970:
Dorothy Unhak publishes the Christie Opara trilogy (The Bait, The Witness, The Ledger), featuring the first policewoman as the central detective in a procedural series.
1972 and 1982:
Julian Symoms publishes "Bloody Murder" (1972) and George N. Dove publishes "The Police Procedural" (1982), laying out key critical studies of the genre's history and conventions.