30 pages • 1 hour read
Henry Sydnor HarrisonMiss Hinch
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1911A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Henry Sydnor Harrison
Harrison was born in 1880 in Sewanee, Tennessee. Caskie Harrison, his father, was a professor and doctor. In 1885, the family relocated to Brooklyn, New York, where Dr. Harrison established a Latin school. Harrison and his two siblings were well-educated. Harrison attended Columbia University, graduating in 1900 at age 20. He served as editor of the Columbia newspaper and participated in productions put on by the school’s dramatic society. After graduation, he taught and continued writing. Upon his father’s death in 1902, Harrison and his family relocated to Richmond, Virginia, where he worked for the Times-Dispatch. He became a columnist and an editorial writer who focused on politics and social issues. He began to write fiction while working on the newspaper.
Harrison resigned from the paper in 1910, relocating to Charleston, West Virginia, where he focused on writing literature. His first novel, Captivating Mary Carstairs, was published later that year. This book was followed closely by his second novel, Queed, in 1911. The seemingly semi-autobiographical book sold well and brought Harrison into the public eye. Harrison's popularity generated interest in his short story “Miss Hinch,” which was first published in McClure’s Magazine that year and later anthologized in many collections. He went on to publish many books and short stories, often centered around women and satirical portrayals of the American South, and he became known as both an author and a social historian. He became a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1915.
Genre Context: “Whodunit” Mysteries
Edgar Allan Poe is credited with the first whodunit with the story “The Murders of Rue Morgue” in 1844, although the term was not coined until the 1930s. The genre grew in popularity throughout the 1800s and into the next century, most notably with the works of Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Crooked House) and Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Study in Scarlet). A whodunit is characterized by a story that presents a crime, typically a murder, and then follows the investigator’s attempts to catch the criminal and solve it. The reader can often solve the mystery, which invites engagement with the story. In this genre, the reader plays the role of the investigator along with the investigator-protagonist in the search for truth and justice.
The 1920s and 1930s are often referred to as the golden age of mystery fiction. Harrison’s story was published prior to that era but prefigures many of its characteristics. For example, Harrison toys with the reader, casting suspicion on each of the two characters. Jessie Dark is the quintessential investigator protagonist chasing her quarry through the darkened streets. Miss Hinch fills the antagonist role of the clever murderer who leaves the police baffled. The pair work throughout the story to outsmart one another. The clues to solve the mystery are in the text but are obscured to help prevent them from being evident upon a first reading.
Whodunits continue to be a popular genre. Authors such as Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Ruth Ware (In a Dark, Dark Wood), and Lucey Foley (The Paris Apartment) frequently appear on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and Guinness reported in 2019 that Agatha Christie is the world’s best-selling author, with over 2 billion books sold. The genre expanded to television and film through movies like Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion, and series like The Killing and Broadchurch.
Historical Context: Yellow Journalism
Yellow journalism refers to the practice of featuring sensationalized news to add readers and increase revenue. The end of the 19th century and the early 20th century featured a sharp increase in this practice, especially in New York City. Competition between the leading New York City newspapers, New York World and The New York Journal, drove yellow journalism to grow and spread. The term was coined from cartoonist Richard F. Outcault’s popular comic The Yellow Kid, which was published in The World. In 1896, The Journal hired him away from The World, intensifying their rivalry. The World responded by hiring another comic who continued the series, and the two newspapers printed increasingly sensational stories as they battled for readers. The competition between the two papers and rival comics was described as yellow journalism.
Joseph Pulitzer purchased The New York World in 1883. The paper increased its circulation to the highest level in the country by “using colorful, sensational reporting and crusades against political corruption and social injustice.” (“Yellow Journalism.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Oct. 2019). Pulitzer’s competitor, William Randolph Hurst, purchased The New York Journal in 1895. Hurst was backed by his family’s California mining money and his successful purchase of the San Francisco Examiner. Their rivalry reflects an increase in circulation and sensationalist journalism across the country.
While the rivalry died out early in the 20th century, some of its tactics endured: the use of color comics in the Sunday paper, large fonts, and banner headlines. Jessie Dark in “Miss Hinch” is a hero of yellow journalism, driving circulation through her captures and columns. The New Yorkers on the train all know the stories, down to the smallest details. This awareness would have been common in the city in the early 1900s. Harrison uses the prevalence of yellow journalism to drive his story and make it accessible to McClure’s readers.
