''Ruth the Betrayer; or, The Female Spy'', by Edward Ellis was the first fictional female detective story. It was published as a
penny dreadful
Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular Serial (literature), serial literature produced during the 19th century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typical ...
in 52 parts in 1862-63
by
John Dicks, and the British Library's single-volume compilation copy was acquired on 28 February 1863. It therefore predates
Andrew Forrester's ''The Female Detective'' and W.S. Hayward's ''The Revelations of a Lady Detective'', both of 1863/4.
Ruth Trail, the protagonist, is "a female detective – a sort of spy we use in the hanky-panky way when a man would be too clumsy".
[Edward Ellis, ''Ruth the Betrayer; or, The Female Spy'' (London, ohn Dicks 1863). The full work has been published in a single volume by Valancourt Books, in 2019, edited and with an introduction by Dagni Bredesen.]
See also
*
Barry Ono
*
List of female detective characters
This is a list of fictional female investigators from novels, short stories, radio, television, films and video games.
A
* Laura Ackroyd is an investigative reporter who solves crimes in West Yorkshire with her boyfriend DCI Michael Thacker ...
Footnotes
Fictional British police detectives
Fictional English people
Literary characters introduced in 1862
Female characters in literature
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