Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was an American writer. Born in Brooklyn in November 1846, she died in April 1935 in Buffalo.
She is the daughter of James Wilson Green and Ann Whitney. Her mother dies when she is just three years old. She spends her childhood in Brooklyn and Manhattan and then studies at Ripley College in Poultney, Vermont. She obtains her Bachelor of Arts in 1867. She wants to be a poet and corresponds with Ralph Waldo Emerson who discourages her to write poetry and instead suggests she tries writing novels. Her poetic works do not garner interest. At the same time, she works for five years on what she calls a criminal romance, The Leavenworth case. It is published in 1878 and becomes an instant best seller. In this novel, she introduces the detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan police force. He reappears in ensuing novels, this time in the company of a female sleuth, Amelia Butterworth. Later, Green will also introduce a younger female detective, Violet Strange. It is often said that the Amelia Butterworth character is behind Agatha Christie’s inspiration for Miss Marple.
In 1887 she marries an actor seven years her junior, Charles Rohlfs. They will have one daughter and two sons. She dies aged 88. Although Jacques Baudou argues the first female crime writer to be Seeley Regester, author of “The dead letter” in 1867, Anna Katharine Green is widely recognised as the actual first female crime writer.
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