The Circular Study

Garden City NY: Garden City Publishing Co., Inc.. Very Good. 1926 (c.1900). Reprint. Softcover. (printed wrappers] [moderate soiling to covers, tiny piece missing at top right corner of front cover, tiny area of surface abrasion in the same area, staining to spine (binding glue bleed-through?); binding is tight and fully intact, the book was likely never read]. (Popular Copyrights) Series Trade PB Reprint of a novel originally published by McClure, Phillips & Co. in 1900, here re-branded as "A Sensational Mystery Story"; this is an uncommon edition, a softcover issue that I've tagged as a "trade paperback," although that term didn't exist in 1926. It may not have seemed all that sensational to mystery readers of the 1920s, who were already in the clutches of the up-and-coming hard-boiled school, but that shouldn't diminish the reputation of its author, whose successful first novel, "The Leavenworth Case," published in 1878, earned her the not-entirely-accurate sobriquet of "mother of the detective novel." As a contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, she was arguably as influential (on the American side of the pond) as he was in establishing many of the tenets of the detective story. This particular novel featured her main recurring character, detective Ebenezer Gryce, who in this case (as in several others) is assisted by one Miss Amelia Butterworth, described (per Wikipedia) as a "nosy society spinster [who was] the prototype for Miss Marple" and other such lady sleuths. (By way of rough comparison, by the time Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in print in 1887, Ms. Green (aka Mrs. Charles Rohlfs) had already published four mysteries featuring Mr. Gryce; this book was the tenth in the series, and the third to feature Miss Butterworth.) .