SOURCE: "Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Rohlfs)," in Little Pilgrimages among the Women Who Have Written Famous Books, L. C. Page & Co., 1902, pp. 91-106.

In the following essay, Harkins and Johnston focus on Green's literary beginnings, her role as a trailblazer in the genre of detective fiction, and her strengths as a writer.

It is related that when The Leavenworth Case was published in 1878, the Pennsylvania Legislature turned from politics to discuss the identity of its author. There was the name on the title-page—Anna Katharine Green—as distinct as the city of Harrisburgh itself. But it must be a nom de plume, some protested. A man wrote the story—maybe a man already famous—and signed a woman's name to it. The story was manifestly beyond a woman's powers. Feminine names were considerably scarcer in the American fiction list then than they are to-day, when girls fresh from...