Today In Literature: Raymond Chandler Published 'The Big Sleep' On This Day In 1939

 

The web site todayinliterature.com noted that on this date in 1939 the great crime writer Raymond Chandler published his first novel, The Big Sleep.

Chandler was fifty-one, an ex-oil company executive who had taken up writing at the age of forty-five, after being fired for alcohol-inspired absenteeism. Over the previous five years he had published enough crime stories in the pulp magazines to survive, but this was his first novel, the first of seven featuring the ever-inimitable and much-copied Philip Marlowe.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=2/6/2013

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Raymond Chandler and his influence on crime novels and films via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/11/on-raymond-chandlers-influence-on-crime.html