Ross MacDonald, The Underground Man

David C. Dougherty (Loyola University Maryland)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1971

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Crime and Detective
Novel

Resources

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Recommended Reading

***This article discusses both

The Underground Man

and

Sleeping Beauty

as detective novels with environmental concerns.***

By 1971 Ross Macdonald was at the pinnacle of his career as a detective novelist. He’d won most of the awards that celebrate crime fiction, had been elected president of the Mystery Writers of America (1965), and had won the Silver Dagger Award in 1964 and the Gold Dagger Award in 1965. In 1971, he achieved any writer’s dream – a lengthy stint on the New York Times Best Seller List for The Underground Man, a pre-publication sell-out, and a Newsweek cover (22 March 1971) with a glowing review by the legendary Eudora Welty. While his writing life was exceeding his expectations, his, and his wife’s (fellow crime novelist Margaret Millar), focus expanded to

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2558 words

Citation: Dougherty, David C.. "The Underground Man". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 May 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8015, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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Ross MacDonald, The Underground Man

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