MARTIN HEWITT - INVESTIGATOR

Written by Arthur Morrison
Illustrated by Sidney Paget

In detective stories the last decade of the nineteenth century was dominated by Sherlock Holmes. The Strand magazine was first published in January 1891 with an immediate circulation of 300,000. In July the first Holmes short story, A Scandal in Bohemia, appeared and within a few issues circulation rose to 500,000.

The Editors of the Strand and its rival variety periodicals used other authors in an attempt to match popularity with Doyle. The most successful of these authors, it is generally agreed, was Arthur Morrison, the chronicler of London slum life, whose sleuth Martin Hewitt is debatably the second-best detective from the period 1891-1905, or the Age of Sherlock Holmes.