Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894 – 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
Dashiell Hammett “is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time”. In his obituary in The New York Times, he was described as “the dean of the … ‘hard-boiled’ school of detective fiction.” Time included Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harvest on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. In 1990, the Crime Writers’ Association picked three out of five of his novels for their list of The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time. Five years later, four out of five of his novels made The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time as selected by the Mystery Writers of America. His novels and stories also had a significant influence on films, including the genres of private eye/detective fiction, mystery thrillers, and film noir.
Raymond Chandler, often considered Hammett’s successor, summarized his accomplishments in The Simple Art of Murder:
Hammett was the ace performer, but there is nothing in his work that is not implicit in the early novels and short stories of Hemingway. Yet for all I know, Hemingway may have learned something from Hammett, as well as from writers like Dreiser, Ring Lardner, Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson and himself … Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought duelling pistols, curare, and tropical fish … He is said to have lacked heart, yet the story he thought most of himself [The Glass Key] is the record of a man’s devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.
Dashiell Hammett – First Editions Identification Guide
Dashiell Hammett – First Printing Dust Jackets Identification Guide
Gallery of First state Dust Jackets of Hammett’s works. Only includes the first appearance in book form. Either the UK or US edition and does not include later printings.
Reference:
- Wikipedia
- Richard Layman: Dashiell Hammett, A Descriptive Bibliography.
