The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations – American is a representative volume of late 19th-century transatlantic editorial curation, compiling some of the finest examples of American mystery, adventure, and psychological fiction. Edited by Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the anthology seeks to establish a canon of suspense and detective stories that reflect the American contribution to a burgeoning global genre. As part of the broader Lock and Key Library series, this volume is both an entertainment compendium and a cultural artifact, illustrating literary tendencies, anxieties, and aspirations unique to the American fin-de-siècle imagination.
The selection showcases authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bret Harte, Anna Katharine Green, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, among others, each contributing to the evolving American narrative of crime and the uncanny. Poe's inclusion is unsurprising and foundational—his tales, such as "The Gold-Bug," represent the genesis of the modern detective genre and merge cryptographic challenge with Gothic unease. His work sets the tone for intellectual mystery as a form of literary artifice and psychological excavation.
Anna Katharine Green, often regarded as the "mother of the detective novel," brings a legalistic precision and feminine sensibility to the genre. Her stories reflect not only a mastery of plot mechanics but also an engagement with gendered perspectives on justice and societal norms. Green's influence is palpable in the American mystery tradition, and her inclusion reflects Hawthorne's awareness of emerging female literary authority.
Bret Harte and others contribute regional and frontier stories that embed the mystery genre in specific American geographies—the West, the New England village, the lawless borderland. These stories are not only puzzling narratives but cultural documents, reflecting shifting moralities, social upheavals, and the consequences of American expansionism. In this regard, The Lock and Key Library becomes a kind of informal cultural history, using mystery as a lens through which national identity and unease are refracted.
A thematic through-line in the volume is the intersection of the psychological and the supernatural. Several stories flirt with or fully embrace the uncanny—ghosts, premonitions, inexplicable events—yet consistently ground these occurrences in rational or moral resolutions. This dialectic reflects an American literary ambivalence toward the supernatural: a space where reason and superstition compete but never fully cancel each other out.
Julian Hawthorne's editorial approach is didactic and genealogical. He positions these stories as milestones in a narrative lineage, shaping a tradition that links popular entertainment with literary merit. His prefaces and introductions (where present) often seek to justify the inclusion of certain authors not only on grounds of style and popularity but as representatives of national or moral character.
Overall, The Lock and Key Library – American is more than a miscellany; it is a structured literary statement. It affirms that American authors, despite the relative youth of the nation, have contributed uniquely and potently to the genres of suspense, detection, and horror. The anthology acts as both archive and argument—preserving tales that exemplify narrative ingenuity while asserting a distinctly American voice within a global tradition of mystery writing.
Keywords: American mystery fiction, Julian Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Katharine Green, Gothic, suspense, supernatural, detective stories, literary anthology, 19th-century American literature.
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The selection showcases authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bret Harte, Anna Katharine Green, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, among others, each contributing to the evolving American narrative of crime and the uncanny. Poe's inclusion is unsurprising and foundational—his tales, such as "The Gold-Bug," represent the genesis of the modern detective genre and merge cryptographic challenge with Gothic unease. His work sets the tone for intellectual mystery as a form of literary artifice and psychological excavation.
Anna Katharine Green, often regarded as the "mother of the detective novel," brings a legalistic precision and feminine sensibility to the genre. Her stories reflect not only a mastery of plot mechanics but also an engagement with gendered perspectives on justice and societal norms. Green's influence is palpable in the American mystery tradition, and her inclusion reflects Hawthorne's awareness of emerging female literary authority.
Bret Harte and others contribute regional and frontier stories that embed the mystery genre in specific American geographies—the West, the New England village, the lawless borderland. These stories are not only puzzling narratives but cultural documents, reflecting shifting moralities, social upheavals, and the consequences of American expansionism. In this regard, The Lock and Key Library becomes a kind of informal cultural history, using mystery as a lens through which national identity and unease are refracted.
A thematic through-line in the volume is the intersection of the psychological and the supernatural. Several stories flirt with or fully embrace the uncanny—ghosts, premonitions, inexplicable events—yet consistently ground these occurrences in rational or moral resolutions. This dialectic reflects an American literary ambivalence toward the supernatural: a space where reason and superstition compete but never fully cancel each other out.
Julian Hawthorne's editorial approach is didactic and genealogical. He positions these stories as milestones in a narrative lineage, shaping a tradition that links popular entertainment with literary merit. His prefaces and introductions (where present) often seek to justify the inclusion of certain authors not only on grounds of style and popularity but as representatives of national or moral character.
Overall, The Lock and Key Library – American is more than a miscellany; it is a structured literary statement. It affirms that American authors, despite the relative youth of the nation, have contributed uniquely and potently to the genres of suspense, detection, and horror. The anthology acts as both archive and argument—preserving tales that exemplify narrative ingenuity while asserting a distinctly American voice within a global tradition of mystery writing.
Keywords: American mystery fiction, Julian Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Katharine Green, Gothic, suspense, supernatural, detective stories, literary anthology, 19th-century American literature.
The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations – American is a representative volume of late 19th-century transatlantic editorial curation, compiling some of the finest examples of American mystery, adventure, and psychological fiction. Edited by Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the anthology seeks to establish a canon of suspense and detective stories that reflect the American contribution to a burgeoning global genre. As part of the broader Lock and Key Library series, this volume is both an entertainment compendium and a cultural artifact, illustrating literary tendencies, anxieties, and aspirations unique to the American fin-de-siècle imagination.
The selection showcases authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bret Harte, Anna Katharine Green, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, among others, each contributing to the evolving American narrative of crime and the uncanny. Poe's inclusion is unsurprising and foundational—his tales, such as "The Gold-Bug," represent the genesis of the modern detective genre and merge cryptographic challenge with Gothic unease. His work sets the tone for intellectual mystery as a form of literary artifice and psychological excavation.
Anna Katharine Green, often regarded as the "mother of the detective novel," brings a legalistic precision and feminine sensibility to the genre. Her stories reflect not only a mastery of plot mechanics but also an engagement with gendered perspectives on justice and societal norms. Green's influence is palpable in the American mystery tradition, and her inclusion reflects Hawthorne's awareness of emerging female literary authority.
Bret Harte and others contribute regional and frontier stories that embed the mystery genre in specific American geographies—the West, the New England village, the lawless borderland. These stories are not only puzzling narratives but cultural documents, reflecting shifting moralities, social upheavals, and the consequences of American expansionism. In this regard, The Lock and Key Library becomes a kind of informal cultural history, using mystery as a lens through which national identity and unease are refracted.
A thematic through-line in the volume is the intersection of the psychological and the supernatural. Several stories flirt with or fully embrace the uncanny—ghosts, premonitions, inexplicable events—yet consistently ground these occurrences in rational or moral resolutions. This dialectic reflects an American literary ambivalence toward the supernatural: a space where reason and superstition compete but never fully cancel each other out.
Julian Hawthorne's editorial approach is didactic and genealogical. He positions these stories as milestones in a narrative lineage, shaping a tradition that links popular entertainment with literary merit. His prefaces and introductions (where present) often seek to justify the inclusion of certain authors not only on grounds of style and popularity but as representatives of national or moral character.
Overall, The Lock and Key Library – American is more than a miscellany; it is a structured literary statement. It affirms that American authors, despite the relative youth of the nation, have contributed uniquely and potently to the genres of suspense, detection, and horror. The anthology acts as both archive and argument—preserving tales that exemplify narrative ingenuity while asserting a distinctly American voice within a global tradition of mystery writing.
Keywords: American mystery fiction, Julian Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Katharine Green, Gothic, suspense, supernatural, detective stories, literary anthology, 19th-century American literature.
The selection showcases authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bret Harte, Anna Katharine Green, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, among others, each contributing to the evolving American narrative of crime and the uncanny. Poe's inclusion is unsurprising and foundational—his tales, such as "The Gold-Bug," represent the genesis of the modern detective genre and merge cryptographic challenge with Gothic unease. His work sets the tone for intellectual mystery as a form of literary artifice and psychological excavation.
Anna Katharine Green, often regarded as the "mother of the detective novel," brings a legalistic precision and feminine sensibility to the genre. Her stories reflect not only a mastery of plot mechanics but also an engagement with gendered perspectives on justice and societal norms. Green's influence is palpable in the American mystery tradition, and her inclusion reflects Hawthorne's awareness of emerging female literary authority.
Bret Harte and others contribute regional and frontier stories that embed the mystery genre in specific American geographies—the West, the New England village, the lawless borderland. These stories are not only puzzling narratives but cultural documents, reflecting shifting moralities, social upheavals, and the consequences of American expansionism. In this regard, The Lock and Key Library becomes a kind of informal cultural history, using mystery as a lens through which national identity and unease are refracted.
A thematic through-line in the volume is the intersection of the psychological and the supernatural. Several stories flirt with or fully embrace the uncanny—ghosts, premonitions, inexplicable events—yet consistently ground these occurrences in rational or moral resolutions. This dialectic reflects an American literary ambivalence toward the supernatural: a space where reason and superstition compete but never fully cancel each other out.
Julian Hawthorne's editorial approach is didactic and genealogical. He positions these stories as milestones in a narrative lineage, shaping a tradition that links popular entertainment with literary merit. His prefaces and introductions (where present) often seek to justify the inclusion of certain authors not only on grounds of style and popularity but as representatives of national or moral character.
Overall, The Lock and Key Library – American is more than a miscellany; it is a structured literary statement. It affirms that American authors, despite the relative youth of the nation, have contributed uniquely and potently to the genres of suspense, detection, and horror. The anthology acts as both archive and argument—preserving tales that exemplify narrative ingenuity while asserting a distinctly American voice within a global tradition of mystery writing.
Keywords: American mystery fiction, Julian Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Anna Katharine Green, Gothic, suspense, supernatural, detective stories, literary anthology, 19th-century American literature.
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The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
The Lock and Key Library: The most interesting stories of all nations: American
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940184703183 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Julian Hawthorne |
| Publication date: | 06/18/2025 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 505 KB |
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