Draft:Westminster Detective Library

The Westminster Detective Library or WDL is an ongoing online project to locate and publish all short detective fiction found in 19th century magazines and newspapers published in America before July 1891. It was created in 2008 by McDaniel College professors LeRoy Lad Panek and Mary Bendel-Simso.

Background
Many people in the 19th century relied on newspapers and magazines for entertainment because books were too expensive, but newspapers were affordable. Stories in newspapers and magazines were written for a wider audience. Plus, some went viral and were read by people all over the country. Historically, it was believed that little important detective fiction was published in America between Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and the syndication of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Scandal in Bohemia,” (1891) the first Sherlock Holmes short story.

Creation
As digitization increased access to newspaper archives, Panek and Bendel-Simso, began to find stories from the 19th century from newspapers and magazines- mostly from small towns in collections that had been overlooked previously. While researching for a book on detective fiction, Panek unexpectedly found many fictional stories of detectives. As he found more and more stories, he partnered with Bendel-Simso to collect and publish them online.

Stories have to be tracked down. Google Books and online periodical databases are used. Because of poor copyright laws, many stories were published over and over under different authors or titles. Undergraduate student assistants, given a small stipend and room and board, help locate, transcribe, edit, and publish stories on the website every summer. Students have also traveled with Dr. Bendel-Simso to work with microfiche.

The Westminster Detective library has been funded by McDaniel College, an Andrew W. Mellon grant,  and the Charles A. Boehlke, Jr., Engaged Faculty Fellows program.

Scope
The stories that are collected must be specifically about a detective, or someone detecting. Some of the stories were written before the term 'detective' was coined, so there was no word to describe this work. Occasionally, words and clusters of words are guessed because of illegibility of original sources. Spelling and punctuation is modernized.

There are over 1,300 stories included in the collection as well as some poetry about detectives. The earliest is “Extracts from a Lawyer’s Portfolio” by Anna Jane Vardill, originally published in serial form in the European Magazine between December of 1817 and August of 1818. The most recent is “A Novel Defense” by W. Thomson, originally published in the New York Ledger on June 27, 1891. Stories by Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Walter Whitman, and Charles Dickens have been found.

This collection widens the field of detective fiction. It is helpful in analyzing and examining the beginnings of the genre. By analyzing elements of these stories, such as setting, law, forensics, women, crime, police, readers get a glimpse into societal issues in the 19th century. For example, many of these stories focus on forgeries and shoplifting rather than modern murder mysteries. Many of these stories also document the very beginning of forensic investigation, when it was just imagined.