Dorothy B. Hughes

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Dorothy Belle Hughes (born August 10, 1904 in Kansas City , Missouri as Dorothy Belle Flanagan , † May 6, 1993 in Ashland , Oregon ) was an American detective writer and literary critic.

life and career

Dorothy Hughes reportedly wanted to be a writer from the age of six and studied journalism at the University of Missouri . In the following time she worked as a journalist for various newspapers and also took courses at the University of New Mexico and Columbia University . With her debut, the volume of poetry Dark Certainity , she won the important literature competition Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition of Yale University Press in 1931 .

In 1940 she published her first detective novel The So Blue Marble ; Most of her 14 novels then appeared in a very productive phase between 1940 and 1952. These novels make Hughes one of the most important female representatives of hardboiled literature . In the novel In A Lonely Place , for example, she overturned genre conventions and has a male homme fatale , who has committed several murders, convicted by two female heroines. She tells this strongly psychologized novel from the perspective of the serial killer, who acts as an unreliable narrator . Despite her success, she withdrew in the 1950s to look after her children and her seriously ill mother. After an eleven year hiatus, her last novel, The Expendable Man , appeared in 1963 , in which a young hitchhiker is murdered. This novel is considered to be one of her best and deals heavily with issues of polarized US society in the 1960s, such as race . Walter Mosley wrote about them:

“Hughes' novels are carefully crafted works, ahead of their time in the use of psychological tension and oppressive observations of class and race. She was one of the best. "

In addition to her fictional works, Hughes also published a book on the history of the University of New Mexico and, in 1978, a successful biography on the author Erle Stanley Gardner . She also worked as a literary critic for important daily newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times ; she was also a brief screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1940s . Her subjects also proved popular there, three of her novels were adapted in movies: 1943 the spy novel The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield and Maureen O'Hara , 1947 Ride on the Pink Horse with Robert Montgomery as director and leading actor and 1950 the classic Ein lonely place with Humphrey Bogart in the role of a murder suspect. Ride on the Pink Horse and A Lonely Place are included in the film noir , which corresponds to the Hardboiled Literature written by Hughes . Other works by Hughes also served as models for television episodes and television films.

Dorothy Hughes died in 1993 at the age of 88 after suffering a stroke. She left three children, who came from her marriage to businessman Levi Allan Hughes Jr. from 1932 until his death in 1975, as well as ten grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

Awards

For her work as a literary critic, Dorothy B. Hughes won two Edgar Allan Poe Awards in the category of best literary criticism in 1951 and 1979 . In 1978 she received the Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Edgar Allan Poe Awards .

Bibliography (selection)

  • Dark Certainty , book of poems (1931)
  • Pueblo on the Mesa: The First Fifty Years of the University of New Mexico (1939)
  • The So Blue Marble , first novel (1940)
  • The Cross-Eyed Bear (1940, later also known as The Cross-Eyed Bear Murders )
  • The Bamboo Blonde (1941)
  • The Fallen Sparrow (1942)
  • The Blackbirder (1943)
  • The Delicate Ape (1944)
  • Johnnie (1944)
  • Dread Journey (1945)
  • Ride the Pink Horse (1946)
  • The Scarlet Imperial (1946, later also known as Kiss for a Killer )
  • In a Lonely Place (1947)
  • The Big Barbecue (1949)
  • The Candy Kid (1950)
  • The Davidian Report (1952)
  • The Expendable Man (1963)
  • Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case of the Real Perry Mason , Critical Biography (1978)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ On the World's Finest Female Noir Writer, Dorothy B. Hughes . In: Los Angeles Review of Books . ( lareviewofbooks.org [accessed March 1, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Megan Abbott: The Origins of American Noir. In: The Paris Review. August 1, 2017, accessed March 1, 2018 .
  3. ^ On the World's Finest Female Noir Writer, Dorothy B. Hughes . In: Los Angeles Review of Books . ( lareviewofbooks.org [accessed March 1, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Megan Abbott: The Origins of American Noir. In: The Paris Review. August 1, 2017, accessed March 1, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Dorothy B. Hughes | Women Crime Writers of the 1940s and 50s. Retrieved March 1, 2018 (American English).
  6. ^ On the World's Finest Female Noir Writer, Dorothy B. Hughes . In: Los Angeles Review of Books . ( lareviewofbooks.org [accessed March 1, 2018]).
  7. ↑ Dorothy B. Hughes. In: Mysterious Press. Retrieved March 1, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Bookslut | The Sultana of Subversion: Three Hard-Boiled Novels by Dorothy B. Hughes. Retrieved March 1, 2018 .
  9. ^ William Grimes: Dorothy B. Hughes, A Mystery Writer And Historian, 88 . In: The New York Times . May 8, 1993, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 1, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Hughes, Dorothy B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hughes, Dorothy Belle (full name); Flanagan, Dorothy Belle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American crime writer and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Kansas City , Missouri
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1993
Place of death Ashland , Oregon