The Step on the Stair

This early work by Anna Katharine Green was originally published in 1923. The Step on the Stair is a must read for fans of one of the first American authors to write in the detective fiction genre. Anna Katharine Green was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA in 1846. She aspired to be a writer from a young age, and corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson during her late teens. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, Green produced her first and best-known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878). Praised by Wilkie Collins, the novel was years bestseller, establishing Greens reputation. Green wrote at a time when fiction, and especially crime fiction, was dominated by men. However, she is now credited with shaping detective fiction into its classic form, and developing the trope of the recurring detective.