1. For the social history of the 1920s see Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yesterday (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931)Google Scholar; Carter, Paul, Another Part of the Twenties (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Leuchtenberg, William, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Nash, Roderick, The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917–1930 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1970)Google Scholar; and Stevenson, Elizabeth, Babbitts and Bohemians: The American 1920s (New York: Macmillan, 1967).Google Scholar

2. “S. S. Van Dine” (Wright, Willard Huntington), “Introduction,” Philo Vance Murder Cases (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), p. 19.Google Scholar

3. The most complete listing of Wright's articles and books is Crawford, Walter B., “Willard Huntington Wright: A Bibliography,” Bulletin of Bibliography and Magazine Notes, 24 (05–08 1963), 11–16.Google Scholar Wright's pre-Van Dine books, in order of publication, are: What Nietzsche Taught (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1915)Google Scholar; Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning (New York: John Lane, 1915)Google Scholar; The Man of Promise (New York: John Lane, 1916)Google Scholar; The Creative Will: Studies in the Philosophy and Syntax of Aesthetics (New York: John Lane, 1916)Google Scholar; Misinforming a Nation (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1917)Google Scholar; and The Future of Painting (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1923).Google Scholar He also co-authored, with Mencken, H. L. and Nathan, George Jean, Europe After 8:15 (New York: John Lane, 1914).Google Scholar His numerous reviewing and editorial duties included service with the following magazines and newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1908–1913)Google Scholar; West Coast Magazine (1909–1910)Google Scholar; Town Topics (1911–1914)Google Scholar; Smart Set (1912–1913)Google Scholar; Forum (1915–1916)Google Scholar; International Studio (1916–1917)Google Scholar; New York Evening Mail (1917)Google Scholar; San Francisco Bulletin (1919)Google Scholar; Photoplay Magazine (1921–1922)Google Scholar; Hearst's International (1922–1923)Google Scholar; and D.A.C. (Detroit Athletic Club) News (1923–1927)Google Scholar; Although the present essay will examine The Benson Murder Case (New York: Scribner's, 1926)Google Scholar as representative of Wright's detective fiction, other volumes in the Van Dine series worthy of analysis are The “Canary” Murder Case (New York: Scribner's, 1927)Google Scholar; The Bishop Murder Case (New York: Scribner's, 1929)Google Scholar; and The Garden Murder Case (New York: Scribner's, 1935).Google Scholar Wright's scrapbooks, including reviews by and about the American critic, are found at the Princeton University Library.

4. May, Henry, The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time, 1912–1917 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), pp. 205–6.Google Scholar

5. Brown, Milton, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1955), p. 90.Google Scholar A more favorable estimate of Wright as art critic is found in Mellquist, Jerome, The Emergence of an American Art (New York: Scribner's, 1942), pp. 244–52.Google Scholar

6. Haycraft, Howard, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story (New York: Appleton-Century, 1941), pp. 163–68.Google Scholar

7. Boyd, Ernest, “Willard Huntington Wright,” Saturday Review of Literature, 19 (04 22, 1939), 8.Google Scholar The most extensive scholarly study of Wright's career is Walter Crawford. “Willard Huntington Wright: Aesthete and Critic,” Master's thesis, Columbia Univ., 1947. A more recent evaluation may be found in Dolmetsch, Carl, “The Writer in America: The Strange Case of ‘S. S. Van Dine,’” Literatur und Sprache der Vereinigten Staaten (Winter-Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg, 1969), pp. 153–64.Google Scholar Dolmetsch provides a very concise treatment of Wright's career as a critic but dismisses the Van Dine series as symptomatic of the man's later failures.

8. Higham, John, “The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890's,” in Weiss, John, ed., The Origins of Modern Consciousness (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1965), p. 27.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 35. A suggestive essay, expanding the dimensions of Higham's contentions, is Cady, Edwin, “The ‘Strenuous Life’ as a Theme in American Cultural History,” in Browne, Ray, Winkelman, Donald, and Hayman, Allen, eds., New Voices in American Studies (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue Univ. Studies, 1966), pp. 59–66.Google Scholar Among the volumes most helpful in analyzing the social changes of late-nineteenth-century America are Hays, Samuel, The Response to Industrialism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (New York: Random House, 1955)Google Scholar; and Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967).Google Scholar

10. Dolmetsch, , “Writer in America,” pp. 153–54Google Scholar, has been particularly valuable in illuminating the theme of the “magazine explosion” and its relationship to Wright's career.

11. Brooks, Van Wyck, America's Coming-of-Age (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1915)Google Scholar, and Lindsay, Vachel, The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Macmillan, 1915).Google Scholar Useful introductions to the early careers of Brooks and Lindsay are: Van Wyck Brooks: The Early Years, a Selection from His Works, 1908–1921, ed. Sprague, Claire (New York: Harper & Row, 1968)Google Scholar; Massa, Ann, Vachel Lindsay: Fieldworker for the American Dream (Bloomington: Univ. of Indiana Press, 1970).Google Scholar

12. Lindsay's decline in popularity and his suicide are movingly described in Masters, Edgar Lee, Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America (New York: Scribner's, 1935), pp. 330–75.Google Scholar Brooks's years of mental breakdown are examined in a number of sources, such as Brooks, Van Wyck, Days of the Phoenix (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957), pp. 437–45Google Scholar; Hoopes, James, Van Wyck Brooks: In Search of American Culture (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1977), pp. 170–93Google Scholar; and Spiller, Robert, ed., The Van Wyck Brooks-Lewis Mumford Letters: The Record of a Literary Friendship, 1921–1963 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970), pp. 41–67.Google Scholar

13. Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America (New York: Knopf, 1965), pp. ix–xiii.Google Scholar

14. Aaron, Daniel, Writers on the Left (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

15. Cawelti, John, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 16.

17. Ibid., p. 19. In terms of the rules of the game in detective fiction, the following anthologies are particularly useful: Haycraft, Howard, ed., The Art of the Mystery Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946)Google Scholar; Nevins, Francis, ed., The Mystery Writer's Art (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1970)Google Scholar; and Landrum, Larry, Browne, Pat, and Browne, Ray, eds., Dimensions of Detective Fiction (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1976).Google ScholarA Catalogue of Crime (New York: Harper & Row, 1971)Google Scholar, compiled by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Taylor, is an extremely informative bibliographical guide.

18. Smart Set, 41 (12 1913), 74.Google Scholar

19. The scholarship on the American vagabond tradition is discussed in Widmer, Kingsley, The Literary Rebel (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 91–107.Google Scholar

20. Braithwaite, William Stanley, “S. S. Van Dine” (Willard Huntington Wright), Philo Vance Murder Cases (note 2 above), p. 33.Google Scholar

21. See Münsterberg, Margarete, Hugo Münsterberg: His Life and Works (New York: D. Appleton, 1922).Google Scholar Among the more representative works by Münsterberg are American Traits from the Point of View of a German (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902)Google Scholar, The Eternal Values (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909)Google Scholar, On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime (New York: McClure, 1908)Google Scholar, and Psychology and Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899).Google Scholar

22. Quoted in Adams, J. Donald, Copey of Harvard (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 84.Google Scholar

23. The response of Harvard's famous alumni to Copeland is commented upon in ibid., pp. 144–201. For illuminating accounts of Harvard life, see also Brooks, Van Wyck, Scenes and Portraits (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1954), pp. 97–122Google Scholar, and Howarth, Herbert, Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. Eliot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), pp. 64–113.Google Scholar

24. Walker, Franklin, A Literary History of Southern California (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1950), pp. 249–52.Google Scholar The diversity of Wright's newspaper reports is illustrated in such articles as “Barbaric Investments That Capitalize Vice,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 3, 1911, 6, p. 1Google Scholar; “Shockingness of the Real,” Los Angeles Times, 02 18, 1909, 2, p. 8Google Scholar; “Hotbed of Soulful Culture,” Los Angeles Times, 05 22, 1910, 2, p. 1.Google Scholar

25. Wright, Willard Huntington (hereinafter: WHW), “Quiet Week-End Rest for City's Innocents,” Los Angeles Times, 07 23, 1911, Sec. 2, p. 1.Google Scholar

26. WHW, “The Gambler's Life in Gay Reno,” Los Angeles Times, 06 26, 1910, Sec. 2, p. 2.Google Scholar

27. WHW, “Viewpoint of Highbrow Anent the Fighting Game,” Los Angeles Times, 03 20, 1910, Sec. 7, p. 8.Google Scholar

28. WHW, “Against Woman Suffrage and the Reasons Why,” Los Angeles Times, 04 16, 1911, Sec. 5, p. 21.Google Scholar

29. WHW, “Fresh Literature—Book Review,” Los Angeles Times, 06 12, 1910, Sec. 3, p. 23.Google Scholar

30. WHW, “Review of the Week,” Los Angeles Times, 09 29, 1912Google Scholar, Sec. 3 (New Books and Book News), p. 1.Google Scholar

31. WHW, “Homer Lea Sorely Stricken,” Los Angeles Times, 08 4, 1912, Sec. 5, p. 21.Google Scholar Lea's role in spreading American racist sentiment is described in Higham, John, Strangers in the Land (New York: Atheneum, 1963), pp. 146, 172.Google Scholar

32. WHW, “Against Woman Suffrage,” p. 21.Google Scholar

33. WHW, What Nietzsche Taught (note 3 above), pp. 258–59.Google Scholar

34. WHW, “Fresh Literature—The Newest Books Reviewed,” Los Angeles Times, 02 13, 1910Google Scholar, Sec. 3, p. 18. See also “Fresh Literature—Reviews of the Latest Books,” Los Angeles Times, 05 9, 1909, Sec. 3, p. 18Google Scholar, and “Fresh Literature—Book Reviews,” Los Angeles Times, 06 11, 1911, Sec. 3, p. 23.Google Scholar

35. Quoted from Nietzsche's The Antichrist, in WHW, “Fresh Reviews: New Books and Book News,” Los Angeles Times Illustrated Weekly, 01 13, 1912, p. 31.Google Scholar

36. WHW, “Respectability Versus Art,” West Coast Magazine, 7 (11 1909), 363–75.Google Scholar

37. WHW, “Edgar Allen Poe: His Art, Accomplishments, Influence,” Los Angeles Times, 01 19, 1909, Sec. 2, p. 8.Google Scholar

38. WHW, “Algernon Charles Swinburne,” Los A ngeles Times, 04 12, 1909, p. 15.Google Scholar

39. WHW, “Sex Impulse in Art,” West Coast Magazine, 7 (10 1909), 290–91.Google Scholar

40. WHW, “Should Artists Marry?” West Coast Magazine, 7 (02 1910), 632–33.Google Scholar

41. WHW, “Fresh Literature—Reviews of the Newest Books,” Los Angeles Times, 01 2, 1910, Sec. 3, p. 18.Google Scholar

42. WHW, “Fresh Literature—Reviews of the Newest Books,” Los Angeles Times, 01 9, 1910, Sec. 8, p. 6.Google Scholar See also December 31, 1911, Sec. 3, p. 15, written after Pollard's death earlier that month. The importance of Pollard and Town Topics has been examined in such works as Lewisohn, Ludwig, Expression in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932), pp. 315–16Google Scholar, and Dolmetsch, Carl, The Smart Set (New York: Dial Press, 1966), pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

43. WHW, “Fresh Literature—Reviews of the Latest Books,” 04 25, 1909, Sec. 3, p. 18.Google Scholar

44. Mencken, H. L. to Wright, Willard Huntington, 04 25, 1911.Google Scholar All letters between Mencken and Wright cited in the present essay were examined in the Mencken Collection at the Princeton University Library. Much of the significant correspondence can be found in Letters of H. L. Mencken, ed. Forgue, Guy (New York: Knopf, 1961)Google Scholar, or in The New Mencken Letters, ed. Bode, Carl (New York: Dial Press, 1977).Google Scholar

45. Mencken, H. L. to Wright, Willard Huntington, 10 28, 1909.Google Scholar

46. WHW, “Los Angeles—The Chemically Pure,” Smart Set, 39 (03, 1913), 107.Google Scholar The history of Town Topics and the Smart Set prior to Wright's arrival is narrated in illuminating fashion by Dolmetsch, , The Smart Set, pp. 3–31.Google Scholar See also Towne, Charles Hanson, So Far, So Good (New York: J. Messner, 1945)Google Scholar, for an account by someone personally involved with Smart Set in the early years.

47. WHW, “A New Mode in Moral Endeavor,” Town Topics, 70 (08 21, 1913), 16.Google Scholar

48. WHW, “A Great American Novel,” Town Topics, 68 (12 19, 1912), 19–20.Google Scholar See also “The Crumbs from the Phillips Table,” Town Topics, 68 (11 14, 1912), 18–19Google Scholar, and “Marriage Versus Economic Independence,” Town Topics, 68 (08 29, 1912), 14.Google Scholar

49. For Wright's most enthusiastic remarks about the German theater see “The Printed Play to the Fore,” Town Topics, 69 (02 20, 1913), 18Google Scholar, and “Wedekind—Psychologist and Satirist,” Town Topics, 68 (10 31, 1912), 22.Google Scholar

50. WHW, “Criticism by the Cabala,” Town Topics, 70 (08 7, 1913), 16Google Scholar.

51. WHW, “Marriage Versus Economic Independence,” 14.Google Scholar

52. WHW, “Iron, Arsenic, Strychnine—and Sugar,” Town Topics, 67 (02 15, 1912), 22.Google Scholar

53. WHW, “Something Personal,” Smart Set, 39 (03 1913), 159–60.Google Scholar See Dolmetsch, , The Smart Set, pp. 32–42Google Scholar, for an evaluation of Wright's career as editor of Smart Set. The most favorable account of Wright's impact on this periodical is by Rascoe, Burton in The Smart Set Anthology (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1934), pp. xviii–xxix.Google Scholar

54. WHW, “Something Personal,” Smart Set, 40 (05 1913), 159–60.Google Scholar

55. Mencken, H. L. to Wright, Willard Huntington, 12 15, 1913.Google Scholar

56. Dreiser, Theodore to Mencken, H. L., 04 1915Google Scholar, in Forgue, , Letters of H. L. Mencken, p. 65.Google Scholar

57. WHW, What Nietzsche Taught (note 3 above), esp. pp. 51, 116, 174, 178, 305–307.Google Scholar

58. WHW, “Mr. Masters' ‘Spoon River Anthology’: A Criticism,” Forum, 55 (01 1916), 109.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., p. 113.

60. WHW, “Aesthetic Struggle in America,” Forum, 55 (02 1916), 207–12.Google Scholar See also The Creative Will (note 3 above), pp. 140–41, 254, 264.Google Scholar The aesthetic theory of Clive Bell and Roger Fry is discussed in Johnstone, J. K., The Bloomsbury Group (New York: Noonday Press 1954), pp. 34–95Google Scholar, and in Fishman, Solomon, The Interpretation of Art (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 1963) pp. 73–142.Google Scholar

61. WHW, The Creative Will, pp. 283–84.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., pp. 211–12.

63. WHW, Modern Painting (note 3 above), pp. 23, 30.Google Scholar

64. WHW, The Creative Will, pp. 194, 203–4, 208, 228–30.Google Scholar

65. Ibid., pp. 206–8. See Munro, Thomas, Evolution in the Arts and Other Theories of Culture History (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1963), pp. 105–17Google Scholar, for a good introduction to the ideas of Taine.

66. WHW, Modern Painting, pp. 327–31.Google Scholar

67. Ibid., pp. 123–29.

68. Ibid., pp. 185–213.

69. Ibid., p. 189.

70. Ibid., p. 230.

71. Ibid., pp. 267–71.

72. Ibid., p. 159.

73 Ibid., pp. 244–46. Wright has a similar passage in The Creative Will, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

74. Wright contributed his most thoughtful comments on American painting while serving as art critic for International Studio and Forum: “An Abundance of Modern Art,” Forum, 55 (03 1916), 331–32Google Scholar; “The Forum Exhibition,” Forum, 55 (04 1916), 457–71Google Scholar; “Modern American Painters—and Winslow Homer,” Forum, 54 (12 1915), 661–72Google Scholar; “Modern Art: An American Painter of Promise,” International Studio, 61 (05 1917), xcv–xviGoogle Scholar; “Modern Art: From Daumier to Marsden Hartley,” International Studio, 61 (03 1917), xxx–xxxiGoogle Scholar; “Modern Art: A Full Harvest of the New Painting,” International Studio, 61 (04 1917), lxii–lxivGoogle Scholar; and “Modern Art: The New Spirit in America,” International Studio 60 (12 1916), lxiv–lxv.Google Scholar

75. WHW, Modern Painting, pp. 332–33.Google Scholar

76. WHW, The Creative Will (note 3 above), pp. 176–77.Google Scholar

77. WHW, “An Abundance of Modern Art,” 320–23.Google Scholar

78. WHW, Modern Painting, p. 179.Google Scholar

79. Ibid., pp. 18–19.

80. WHW, “Flaubert: A Revaluation,” North American Review, 206 (09 1917), 458.Google Scholar

81. WHW, Modern Painting, p. 18.Google Scholar

82. WHW, The Creative Will, pp. 86, 108–9, 119–21.Google Scholar

83. Mencken, H. L., “America Produces a Novelist,” Forum, 55 (04 1916) 490–96.Google Scholar

84. “He Hopes Our Nation Will Become Nietzschean,” New York Tribune, 03 26, 1916, 5, p. 2.Google Scholar

85. WHW, “The Conscience of Germany,” Forum, 55 (04 1916), 499–506.Google Scholar

86. Misinforming a Nation appeared initially as a series of articles for Reedy's Mirror, 11 24, 1916—January 26, 1917.Google Scholar

87. Dolmetsch, , “The Writer in America” (note 7 above), pp. 162–63Google Scholar, provides a succinct account of Wright's activities during and immediately following World War I. Wright's declining fortunes are described by Mencken, H. L. to Boyd, Ernest, 08 9, 1919Google Scholar, in Forgue, , Letters of H. L. Mencken (note 44 above), p. 152.Google Scholar Wright's articles for the San Francisco Bulletin can be found in Volume 4 of his Scrapbooks at the Princeton University Library. Representative pieces are dated: “Music Criticism,” 02 12, 1919Google Scholar; “Los Angeles—The City of the Dreadful Night,” 06 23, 1919Google Scholar; “Jazz Epidemic Is Rampant,” 07 8, 1919Google Scholar; “San Francisco—Paris of America,” 07 11, 1919Google Scholar: “Musical Jazz Birds Spread Fame of San Francisco,” 08 12, 1919.Google Scholar

88. Again I used the Wright Scrapbooks for “Genius of Conrad Superbly Revealed in ‘Arrow of Gold,’” 08 23, 1919Google Scholar, and “Dostoevsky's Work Discussed from a Standpoint of Art,” 08 30, 1919Google Scholar, as examples of his literary criticism from the San Francisco Bulletin. See also “Chaplin's Great Secret,’ Photoplay, 21 (02 1922), 40–41, 104105Google Scholar; and “The Romance of the Third Dimension,” Photoplay, 20 (09 1921), 41–42, 105.Google Scholar Typical contributions by “Frederick Van Vranken” include ‘With Music By—,” Photoplay, 20 (10 1921), 54, 105Google Scholar, and “The Unhappy Ending,” Photoplay, 21 (12 1921), 25–26.Google Scholar

89. I have relied heavily on Dolmetsch, , “The Writer in America,” p. 163Google Scholar, for the details regarding Wright's physical and mental health in the 1920s. See Wright's own account in “I Used to Be a Highbrow but Look at Me Now,” American Magazine, 106 (09 1928), 14–15, 118, 122–29.Google Scholar

90. The following pieces, reprinted in Haycraft, , The Art of the Mystery StoryGoogle Scholar above, are especially illustrative of the self-consciousness of classic detective fiction in the 1920s: Freeman, R. Austin, “The Art of the Detective Story,” pp. 7–17Google Scholar; Wrong, E. M., “Crime and Detection,” pp. 18–32Google Scholar; Sayers, Dorothy, “The Omnibus of Crime,” pp. 71–109Google Scholar; and Nicholson, Marjorie, “The Professor and the Detective,” pp. 110–27.Google Scholar

91. “Van Dine, S. S.,” “Twenty rules for Writing Detective Stories,” reprinted in The Art of the Mystery Story, p. 189.Google Scholar

92. Ibid., p. 191.

93. Ibid., p. 190.

94. Ibid., p. 192.

95. See Cawelti, , Adventure, Mystery and Romance (note 17 above), pp. 80–98Google Scholar, for a perceptive synthesis of various critical attitudes regarding the classic detective fiction formula. Other suggestive scholarly analyses are Grelle, George, “Murder and Manners: The Formal Detective Story,” pp. 37–57Google Scholar, and Aydelotte, William, “The Detective Story as a Historical Source,” pp. 68–82Google Scholar, both reprinted in Dimensions of Detective Fiction.

96. See Cawelti, , Adventure, Mystery and Romance (note 17 above), pp. 95–96Google Scholar, for an elaboration on the detective-psychiatrist analogy.

97. I have been influenced considerably by Caughey, John's “Artificial Social Relations in Modern America,” America Quarterly, 30 (Spring 1978), 70–89.Google Scholar I regret that I was not aware of Professor Caughey's insights at an earlier date, for his comments about the need to examine the social interaction taking place within the realm of popular formulas and personal fantasies might have easily influenced the structure of my analyses of Wright's fiction.

98. A representative negative response on the part of recent students of detective fiction is found in Barzun, and Taylor, , Catalogue of Crime (note 17 above), pp. 412–13.Google Scholar A new sympathetic treatment is offered by Symons, Julian, Mortal Consequences (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 110–13.Google Scholar

99. The concept of the “disinterested intelligentsia” has a complicated history in the twentieth century. The classic formulation of the role of the intellectual in these terms is found in Mannheim, KarlIdeology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936).Google Scholar

100. Again I have been influenced by Caughey's suggestive remarks in “Artificial Social Relations in Modern America,” esp. pp. 72–73.Google Scholar