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Raymond Chandler
(1888 - 1959)
Category: American Literature Born: July 23, 1888
Chicago, Illinois, United States Died: March 26, 1959
La Jolla, California
Related authors:
Chester Himes, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, Jim Thompson, John Buchan, John Gardner, P. D. James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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| 2/6/1939 |
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Chandler, Marlowe, The Big Sleep
On this day in 1939, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep was published. Chandler was fifty-one, an ex-oil company executive who had taken up writing at the age of forty-five after being fired for alcohol-inspired absenteeism. This was his first novel, and the first of seven featuring the ever-inimitable and much-copied Philip Marlowe. |
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| 10/24/1958 |
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Philip Marlowe's Bad Idea
On this day in 1958 Raymond Chandler began his last novel, the never-completed (by him) Poodle Springs. This was Chandler's name for Palm Springs, where "every third elegant creature you see has at least one poodle," and where Philip Marlowe thought he might settle down with his new wife, the socialite Linda Loring. Chandler lost interest after a few chapters; Marlowe probably would have too. |
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| 11/27/1953 |
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Raymond Chandler's Long Goodbye
On this day in 1953 Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye was published. Many say it is his best novel, and the biographers trace many connections to Chandler's personal life, despite being told not to: "Yes, I am exactly like the characters in my books.... I am thirty-eight years old and have been for the last twenty years. I do not regard myself as a dead shot, but I am a pretty dangerous man with a wet towel." |
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Poodle Springs
by Robert B. Parker, Raymond Chandler
fiction |
Raymond Chandler: Collected Stories
anthology |
Raymond Chandler: Later Novels and Other Writings
by Frank McShane (Editor), Raymond Chandler
anthology, fiction, letters |
Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels
by Frank McShane (Editor), Raymond Chandler
anthology, fiction |
The Big Sleep
fiction |
The Long Goodbye
fiction |
The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909-1959
by Tom Hiney (Editor), Frank Macshane (Editor), Raymond Chandler
letters |
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FIND BOOKS BY RAYMOND CHANDLER
AT
Powell's Books
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Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection
An educational website for fans of mystery and detection stories offers information and commentary on selected stories, and an explanation their place within the genre and in relation to other writers, such as Dashiell Hammett. Offers commentary on "The Big Sleep," Farewell My Lovely," and "The Lady in the Lake."
"Chandler was largely obscure while he published in the pulps and his first four novels in hardback, but the reprinting of his novels in the new medium of paperback books in 1943 made him an immediate best seller. He sold millions of books, and became one of the best known writers in America. Movie (1944 - 1947) and radio (1949 - ) adaptations followed. After World War II ended in 1945, private eye tales imitative of Chandler largely replaced the old detective heroes in the pulps and other mystery magazines. While the old pulp tales tended to be exuberant and escapist in tone, the private eye stories were full of angst and weltschmerz. The p i stories were also more "realistic" in tone, tending to offer low key portraits of the hero doing battle with powerful evil people, mobsters and sinister millionaires and their beautiful but corrupt mistresses, instead of the gung ho adventure plotting of the 1930's. Mickey Spillane appeared on the p i scene in 1947 with his Mike Hammer novels, works that sold millions in paperback from 1949 on, and which contributed to the expansion of the paperback book." |  |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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