Ruth the Betrayer; or, The Female Spy, by Edward Ellis was the first fictional female detective story., Barry Ono Collections, shelfmark:C.140.c.41/Mic.C.12114: its primacy is demonstrated in a paper given by Judith Flanders in July 2010 to the Second Annual Conference of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association at Senate House, London, and published in the Times Literary Supplement of 18 June 2010, pp. 14-15 under the title "The Hanky-Panky Way: Creators of the first female detectives – a mystery solved". It was published as a penny dreadful in 52 parts in 1862-63 by John Dicks, and the British Library's single-volume compilation copy was acquired on 28 February 1863.British Library acquisition stamp It therefore predates Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective and W.S. Hayward's The Revelations of a Lady Detective, both of 1863/4. Flanders, 2011, and see also Edward Ellis, Ruth the Betrayer: or, The Female Spy (Valancourt, 2019), especially the introduction by Dagni Bredesen.
Ruth Trail, the protagonist, is "a female detective – a sort of spy we use in the hanky-panky way when a man would be too clumsy".Edward Ellis, Ruth the Betrayer; or, The Female Spy (London, [John Dicks], 1863). The full work has been published in a single volume by Valancourt Books, in 2019, edited and with an introduction by Dagni Bredesen.
See also Barry Ono List of female detective characters
Footnotes