Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work
The Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work, established in 1977, is a literary award presented as part of the Edgar Awards for a nonfiction critical or biographical hardcover, paperback, or electronic book.
To be eligible, biographical books should be "biographies of mystery writers or other notable practitioners of the genre, not to criminals."[1] Criminal biographies are eligible for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Fact Crime.[1]
The Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work winners are listed below.
Recipients[edit]
 |
2000s[edit]
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley | Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters | Winner | [3] |
| 2009 | Dr. Harry Lee Poe | Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to his Tell-Tale Stories | Winner | [4] |
2010s[edit]
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Otto Penzler | The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives | Winner | |
| 2011 | Yunte Huang | Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History | Winner | |
| Rafael Alvarez | The Wire: Truth Be Told | Shortlist | ||
| John Curran | Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: 50 Years of Mysteries in the Making | Shortlist | ||
| Stephen Doyle and David A. Crowder | Sherlock Holmes for Dummies | Shortlist | ||
| David Morrell and Hank Wagner (editors) | Thrillers: 100 Must Reads | Shortlist | ||
| 2012 | Michael Dirda | On Conan Doyle; or, The Whole Art of Storytelling | Winner | [5][6] |
| Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer, and John-Henri Holmberg | The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of our Time | Shortlist | [6] | |
| John Curran | Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making | Shortlist | [6] | |
| Philippa Gates | Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film | Shortlist | [6] | |
| Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick | Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds and Marnie | Shortlist | [6] | |
| 2013 | James O'Brien | The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics | Winner | [7] |
| John Paul Athanasourelis | Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: The Hard-Boiled Detective Transformed | Shortlist | ||
| John Connolly (editor) | Books To Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels | Shortlist | ||
| Otto Penzler (editor) | In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero | Shortlist | ||
| 2014 | Erik Dussere | America Is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture | Winner | [8][9] |
| Bill Alder | Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories | Shortlist | [9] | |
| Justin Gifford | Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing | Shortlist | [9] | |
| Andrew Lycett | Ian Fleming | Shortlist | [9] | |
| Melissa Schaub | Middlebrow Feminism in Classic British Detective Fiction | Shortlist | [9] | |
| 2015 | J. W. Ocker | Poe-Land: The Hallowed Haunts of Edgar Allan Poe | Winner | [10][11] |
| Charles Brownson | The Figure of the Detective: A Literary History and Analysis | Shortlist | [10] | |
| Jim Mancall | James Ellroy: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction | Shortlist | [10] | |
| Robert Miklitsch | Kiss the Blood Off My Hands: Classic Film Noir | Shortlist | [10] | |
| Francis M. Nevins | Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law: Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Fiction and Film | Shortlist | [10] | |
| 2016 | Martin Edwards | The Golden Age of Murder | Winner | [12][13] |
| Frederick Forsyth | The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue | Shortlist | ||
| Suzanne Marrs and Tom Nolan | Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald | Shortlist | ||
| Matthew Parker | Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica | Shortlist | ||
| Nathan Ward | The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | Ruth Franklin | Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life | Winner | [14] |
| Peter Ackroyd | Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life | Shortlist | ||
| Mitzi M. Brunsdale | Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime: Works and Authors of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden Since 1967 | Shortlist | ||
| David J. Skal | Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Lawrence P. Jackson | Chester B. Himes: A Biography | Winner | [15] |
| Mattias Bostrom | From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women who Created an Icon | Shortlist | ||
| Tatiana de Rosnay | Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier | Shortlist | ||
| Curtis Evans | Murder in the Closet: Essays on Queer Clues in Crime Fiction Before Stonewall | Shortlist | ||
| Michael Sims | Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | Leslie S. Klinger | Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s | Winner | [16] |
| Laird R. Blackwell | The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction | Shortlist | ||
| Alice Bolin | Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession | Shortlist | ||
| Yasuhiro Takeuchi | Mark X: Who Killed Huck Finn’s Father? | Shortlist | ||
| Laura Thompson | Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life | Shortlist |
2020s[edit]
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | John Billheimer | Hitchcock and the Censors | Winner | [17][18] |
| Ursula Buchan | Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan | Shortlist | ||
| John Curran | The Hooded Gunman: An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club | Shortlist | ||
| Anne McKendry | Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview | Shortlist | ||
| Mo Moulton | The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women | Shortlist | ||
| 2021 | Christina Lane | Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock | Winner | [19][20] |
| Martin Edwards | Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club | Shortlist | [20] | |
| Erin E. MacDonald | Ian Rankin: A Companion to the Mystery & Fiction | Shortlist | [20] | |
| Elizabeth Mannion and Brian Cliff | Guilt Rules All: Irish Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction | Shortlist | [20] | |
| Jacqueline Winspear | This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing | Shortlist | [20] | |
| 2022 | Edward White | The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense | Winner | [21] |
| Mark Aldridge | Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World | Shortlist | ||
| Richard Greene | The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene | Shortlist | ||
| James McGrath Morris | Tony Hillerman: A Life | Shortlist | ||
| John Tresch | The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science | Shortlist | ||
| 2023 | Martin Edwards | The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators | Winner | [22] |
| Mary Anna Evans and J. C. Bernthal (editors) | The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie | Shortlist | ||
| David Geherin | The Crime World of Michael Connelly: A Study of His Works and Their Adaptations | Shortlist | ||
| Andrew Neiderman | The Woman Beyond the Attic: The V.C. Andrews Story | Shortlist | ||
| Lucy Worsley | Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman | Shortlist | ||
| 2024 | Steven Powell | Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy | Winner | [23][24] |
| David Bordwell | Perplexing Plots: Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder | Shortlist | [24] | |
| Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor | Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction | Shortlist | [24] | |
| Mark Dawidziak | A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe | Shortlist | [24] | |
| Robert Morgan | Fallen Angel: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe | Shortlist | [24] |
References[edit]
- ^ a b "Edgar Award Category Information". Mystery Writers of America. Archived from the original on 2022-12-14. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
- ^ a b c "Edgar Awards". Stop, You're Killing Me. Archived from the original on June 30, 2023. Retrieved 2024-05-05.
- ^ "Awards: The Edgars; Arthur C. Clarke Prize". Shelf Awareness. May 2, 2008. Archived from the original on 2022-09-20. Retrieved 2022-12-10.
- ^ "Awards: Edgars; Arthur C. Clarke". Shelf Awareness. May 1, 2009. Archived from the original on 2023-06-03. Retrieved 2022-12-10.
- ^ "2012 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2012-11-03.
- ^ a b c d e Cogdill, Oline. "2012 Edgar Award Winners". Mystery Scene Magazine. Archived from the original on 2022-07-12. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
- ^ "2013 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2013-11-02.
- ^ "2014 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2014-11-10.
- ^ a b c d e "The 2014 Edgar Award Nominations and Winners". Heights Libraries. Archived from the original on 2022-12-10. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
- ^ a b c d e "2015 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2015-11-08.
- ^ "Awards: Edgar Winners; Ridenhour Book". Shelf Awareness. May 1, 2015. Archived from the original on 2022-09-21. Retrieved 2022-12-10.
- ^ "2016 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2016-11-05.
- ^ "Awards: Edgar Winners". Shelf Awareness. May 2, 2016. Archived from the original on 2022-09-15. Retrieved 2022-12-11.
- ^ "2017 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2017-11-07.
- ^ "2018 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2018-11-10.
- ^ "2019 Nominees and Winners". Edgar Awards. Archived from the original on 2019-08-18.
- ^ "Edgar Award Nominees". www.theedgars.com. Archived from the original on 2012-03-07. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
- ^ "Edgar Allan Poe Awards 2020 winners announced". Books+Publishing. 2020-05-05. Archived from the original on 2020-05-06. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
- ^ "2021 Edgar Allan Poe Award Winners". Mystery Writers of America. Archived from the original on 2021-04-29. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
- ^ a b c d e "Congratulations to the Winners of the 2021 Edgar Awards". CrimeReads. 2021-04-29. Archived from the original on 2021-06-21. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
- ^ "2022 Edgar Allan Poe Award Winners". Mystery Writers of America. Archived from the original on 2024-05-06. Retrieved 2022-12-14.
- ^ Schaub, Michael (2023-04-28). "Edgar Award Winners Are Revealed". Kirkus Reviews. Archived from the original on 2023-04-30. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
- ^ Schaub, Michael (2024-05-02). "Winners of the 2024 Edgar Awards Are Revealed". Kirkus Reviews. Archived from the original on 2024-05-02. Retrieved 2024-05-06.
- ^ a b c d e "2024 Edgar Winners" (PDF). Edgar Awards. May 4, 2024. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 2, 2024. Retrieved May 4, 2024.