Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest

Lee Horsley (Lancaster University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1929

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Red Harvest

, first called

The Cleansing of Poisonville

, was serialised in

Black Mask

between November 1927 and February 1928. Published in the following year by Alfred A. Knopf, it became Dashiell Hammett's first hard-boiled novel. Along with

The Glass Key

(1931) it is the most directly political of Hammett's novels; it is certainly the most violent and apocalyptic of his works, representing not remediable political-economic ills but a sense of deep-seated moral disorder. The Montana mining town in which the novel is set has an element of historical specificity, but Hammett also makes extensive use of the naming of the town, which is known by two names, both metaphoric. As “Personville” it suggests a representative population and, in terms of the power structure, implicitly critiques…

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766 words

Citation: Horsley, Lee. "Red Harvest". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 October 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2437, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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