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RECOLLECTIONS OF A DETECTIVE POLICE-OFFICER

1856Best.-Nr. 53813London: J. & C. Brown & Co 1856. First edition. Very good. First authorized edition in book form of these collected police detective stories the first ever of their kind to feature an investigator from Scotland Yard. Originally published in CHAMBERS'S EDINBURGH JOURNAL the thirteen stories of the First Series plus an eight additional episodes gathered three years later in the Second Series mark the first appearance in fiction of a Scotland Yard detective. Russell in the persona of "Waters" presented his narratives as first-person recollections in line with the conventions of the mid-Victorian police memoir then enjoying great popularity while offering to the reading public a new kind of hero: a policeman with intelligence curiosity and integrity. Detective fiction has always pressed up against the porous borders of that much-derided segment of popular literature now known as "true crime": just as the latter is frequently embellished and distorted for the sake of a better story crime and detective fiction in its earliest forms borrowed the shock of the real insisting as a matter of genre convention that the events depicted were only lightly fictionalized that the reader was given entrée into the "marginalized social space between 'respectable' and 'criminal'" Saunders occupied by the real-life police detective; that they were being told a true story by an insider. Verisimilitude was the point: "The genre was designed to take the private spaces operations and methodologies of the police force and publicize them for the reader and Russell himself explained that his memoir writing was designed to present an inside view into policing for readers" Saunders. Given the bedrock importance of this interplay between the real and the unreal at the dawn of detective fiction it is perhaps unsurprising that Sherlock Holmes the most famous fictional private detective of later Victorian decades would inspire a legion of devotees to insist on his factual reality perfectly well aware that this was not true and sublimely indifferent to it. A handsome copy of this scarce and vital Queen's Quorum and Haycraft-Queen title - especially uncommon complete in one volume. Two octavo volumes bound in one 6.25'' x 4''. Contemporary half calf marbled boards. Gilt-ruled spine with spine label. Lacking frontispiece as sometimes seen. 8 310 pages. In custom cloth slipcase. Sympathetically rebacked with reinforcement to hinges. Some rubbing chipping rear joint. Overall clean and sound. J. & C. Brown & Co unknown

Type Punch Matrix · Vereinigte Staaten2.000,00 $≈ 1.786,83 €

Waters" [William Russell]Biblio.com

THE EXPERIENCES OF A FRENCH DETECTIVE OFFICER

1861Best.-Nr. 54625London: Charles H. Clarke 1861. Very good plus. First edition of this classic Victorian detective novel ostensibly written in the form of a memoir by an expat detective who fled his home country to avoid political persecution. After his RECOLLECTIONS OF A DETECTIVE POLICE-OFFICER 1856 the first novel of its kind to feature an investigator from Scotland Yard Russell followed-up with this first-person series of eight short stories featuring Detective Duhamel "who escaped his native France to avoid imprisonment for political reasons" Dever 234. Detective fiction has always pressed up against the porous borders of that much-derided segment of popular literature now known as "true crime": just as the latter is frequently embellished and distorted for the sake of a better story crime and detective fiction in its earliest forms borrowed the shock of the real insisting as a matter of genre convention that the events depicted were only lightly fictionalized that the reader was given entrée into the "marginalized social space between 'respectable' and 'criminal'" Saunders occupied by the real-life police detective; that they were being told a true story by an insider. Verisimilitude was the point: "The genre was designed to take the private spaces operations and methodologies of the police force and publicize them for the reader and Russell himself explained that his memoir writing was designed to present an inside view into policing for readers" Saunders. To this end Russell / Duhamel begin the book with an "essay" "The Difference Between English and French Detectives" writing: "It is true they are alike agents of the public force and that their common mission is to frustrate or detect offenses against the person and against property. But there the resemblance ends . Yes multifarious all-embracing are the duties of the French Secret Police." Rare; OCLC locates just eight copies. 6.25'' x 4''. Original full purple textured cloth with gilt spine titles. 2 13-317 1 publisher's ad pages complete. Spine sunned with faint perished label shadow. Minor shelfwear. Overall clean and sound. Charles H. Clarke unknown