DASHIELL HAMMETT
DASHIELL
HAMMETT
THE MALTESE FALCON
THE THIN MAN
RED HARVEST
’
Alfred A.Knopf NewYork London Toronto
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THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
First included in Everyman’s Library,
US copyright information:
The Maltese Falcon copyright © , by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright renewed , by Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man copyright © , by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright renewed , by Dashiell Hammett
Red Harvest copyright © by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright renewed by Dashiell Hammett
UK copyright information:
The Maltese Falcon first published in Great Britain by Cassell & Co
Ltd. Copyright Cassell & Co Ltd.
The Thin Man first published in Great Britain by Cassell & Co Ltd.
Copyright Cassell & Co Ltd.
Red Harvest first published in Great Britain by Cassell & Co Ltd.
Copyright Cassell & Co Ltd.
This edition is published by permission of the
Orion Publishing Group
Introduction, Bibliography and Chronology Copyright ©
by Everyman’s Library
Typography by Peter B. Willberg
Third printing (US)
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Northburgh House, Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT, and
distributed by Random House (UK) Ltd.
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ISBN --- (US)
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the
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Book design by Barbara de Wilde and Carol Devine Carson
Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH, Po¨ssneck
C H R O N O L O G Y
——
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
Samuel Dashiell Hammett born
Conan Doyle: The Memoirs of
May in St Mary’s County,
Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle
Maryland to Richard Thomas
visits US for lecture tour.
Hammett and Annie Bond
Twain: Pudd’nhead Wilson.
Dashiell.
Fitzgerald born.
Chekhov: The Seagull.
Hardy: Jude the Obscure.
Hemingway born.
Hornung: Raffles: The Amateur
Cracksman.
Chopin: The Awakening.
James: The Awkward Age.
Nabokov born.
Freud: The Interpretation of
Dreams.
Conrad: Lord Jim.
Dreiser: Sister Carrie.
Family moves to Baltimore.
Mann: Buddenbrooks.
Kipling: Kim.
Conan Doyle: The Hound of the
Baskervilles.
Steinbeck born.
Chekhov dies.
James: The Golden Bowl.
Conan Doyle: The Return of
Sherlock Holmes.
Wharton: The House of Mirth.
Beckett born.
Conrad: The Secret Agent.
Auden born.
Attends Baltimore Polytechnic
Institute. Leaves after less than a
year to work at various jobs.
Stein: Three Lives.
Dreiser: The Financier.
xxxii
HISTORICAL EVENTS
The US becomes the leading manufacturing nation in the world. Beginning
of Freudian psychoanalysis. Nicholas II becomes Tsar.
William McKinley elected US president. Klondike Gold Rush.
Invention of the cash register. Rockefeller ‘retires’ worth c. $ million.
Spanish-American War.
Outbreak of Boer War. Alfred Hitchcock born.
US population million. US railroad network just under , miles.
First International Socialist Congress in Paris. Planck’s quantum theory.
President McKinley assassinated. Succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt,
ushering in a progressive era in American politics. Marconi transmits
messages across the Atlantic. Death of Queen Victoria; accession of
Edward VII.
War breaks out between Japan and Russia.
Einstein’s theory of relativity. General strikes, mutiny and incipient
revolution in Russia.
San Francisco earthquake.
Cubist exhibition in Paris.
First Ford Model T car.
Woodrow Wilson elected US president. Sinking of Titanic. Charlie Chaplin’s
first film.
xxxiii
D A S H I E L L
H A M M E T T
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
Frost: A Boy’s Will.
Lawrence: Sons and Lovers.
Gorky: Childhood.
Burroughs: Tarzan of the Apes.
Joyce: Dubliners.
Detective for Pinkerton’s
Ford: The Good Soldier.
National Detective Service.
Kafka: Metamorphosis.
Lawrence: The Rainbow.
Conan Doyle: His Last Bow.
Eliot: ‘The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock’.
Enlists in army.
Discharged from army with
Black Mask, pulp magazine,
disability pension following
set up.
bouts of flu, pneumonia and
Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio.
tuberculosis. Returns to work at
Woolf : Night and Day.
Pinkerton’s.
Works as Pinkerton’s operative
Christie: The Mysterious Affair
in Spokane, Washington, Idaho
at Styles (first novel).
and Montana. Is hospitalised,
Mansfield: Bliss.
where he meets nurse Josephine
Fitzgerald: This Side of
(‘Jose’) Dolan.
Paradise.
Pound: Hugh Selwyn Mauberly.
Lewis: Main Street.
Marries Jose Dolan on July in
Dos Passos: Three Soldiers.
San Francisco. Daughter Mary
Lawrence: Women in Love.
Jane born October.
Pirandello: Six Characters in
Search of an Author.
First short stories published in
Carroll John Daly creates the
Smart Set and Black Mask.
first hard-boiled detective in
‘The False Burton Combs’.
Eliot: The Wasteland.
Joyce: Ulysses.
Mansfield: The Garden Party.
Introduces the Continental Op
in Black Mask short story ‘Arson
Plus’.
‘The Scorched Face’ (novelette)
Dreiser: An American Tragedy.
published in Black Mask.
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby.
Loos: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Stein: The Making of Americans.
Kafka: The Trial.
Woolf : Mrs Dalloway.
Dos Passos: Manhattan
Transfer.
xxxiv
C H R O N O L O G Y
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Completion of new, even grander Grand Central Station building. Post-
Impressionist exhibition in New York.
Outbreak of World War I. President Wilson proclaims US neutrality.
Panama Canal opens.
US joins war in Europe. Russian October Revolution.
World War I ends November.
The Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of
intoxicating liquors, is ratified. Versailles Peace Conference, with Wilson’s
Fourteen Points. The ‘Red Scare’ in the US: American steelworkers start
year-long strike. Nineteenth Amendment (Female Suffrage) passed by the
House.
Warren G. Harding elected US president. Slump in US. League of Nations
formed. Russian Civil War ends. The ‘jazz age’.
Quota laws restrict immigration to the US. Radio broadcasting.
Mussolini gains power in Italy. Revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Talking
pictures developed.
Calvin Coolidge elected president after Harding’s death. Moscow becomes
capital of USSR; Stalin becomes General Secretary of Communist Party.
Al Capone a powerful force in Chicago. The ‘Monkey Trial’ in Dayton,
Tennessee finds for Genesis and signals the withdrawal of Southern culture
into other-worldliness.
xxxv
D A S H I E L L
H A M M E T T
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
Advertising manager for jeweller
Fitzgerald: All the Sad Young
Albert Samuels. Daughter
Men.
Josephine Rebecca born May.
Faulkner: Soldier’s Pay.
Hemingway: The Sun Also
Rises.
Christie: The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd.
First part of Red Harvest
Woolf : To the Lighthouse.
(originally called ‘Poisonville’)
Cather: Death Comes for the
published in Black Mask.
Archbishop.
Wilder: The Bridge of San
Luis Rey.
Proust: Remembrance of Things
Past.
Conan Doyle: The Case Book
of Sherlock Holmes.
Lawrence: Lady Chatterley’s
Lover.
Bulgakov: The Master and
Margarita (to ).
O’Neill: Strange Interlude.
Waugh: Decline and Fall.
Red Harvest and The Dain Curse
Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms.
published by Knopf. Moves to
Faulkner: The Sound and the
New York. First part of The
Fury.
Maltese Falcon and ‘Fly Paper’
Wolfe: Look Homeward, Angel.
(a novelette) published in Black
Remarque: All Quiet on the
Mask.
Western Front.
The Maltese Falcon published by
Lawrence dies.
Knopf. Roadhouse Nights, a movie
Faulkner: As I Lay Dying.
based on Red Harvest, released by
Crane: The Bridge.
Paramount. Moves to Hollywood; Freud: Civilization and its
meets Lillian Hellman.
Discontents.
The Glass Key published. Moves
back to New York. First film
version of The Maltese Falcon,
starring Ricardo Cortez and
Bebe Daniels, released by
Warner Brothers. Hammett co-
writes screenplay.
Crane dies.
Huxley: Brave New World.
Caldwell: Tobacco Road.
Erle Stanley Gardner: The
Case of the Velvet Claws (first
Perry Mason novel).
xxxvi
C H R O N O L O G Y
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Television invented by John Logie Baird. First liquid fuel rocket. General
strike in UK.
Lindbergh’s solo Atlantic flight. Financial crisis in Germany. Trotsky
expelled from Communist Party in USSR .
First full-length film, first television broadcast; million cars and million
radios in use in US. Herbert Hoover elected US president. First ‘Mickey
Mouse’ cartoon. Gershwin: An American in Paris. Amelia Earhart becomes the
first woman to fly the Atlantic solo.
Wall Street Crash, October; mass unemployment. US establishes Federal
Loans. Beginning of world depression. Al Capone arrested. Museum of
Modern Art in New York founded. Land speed record set at mph.
Unemployment rises to million. US tariff raised. France begins Maginot
Line. Gandhi begins civil disobedience campaign in India. Empire State
Building opened.
Al Capone found guilty of tax evasion and sent to prison (the first time a
charge was made to stick). Britain abandons Gold Standard. Invention of
the electric razor.
Lindbergh’s son kidnapped. Franklin Roosevelt, Democrat, elected US
president. Inaugurates New Deal. Stock prices in the US fall to % of their
value.
xxxvii
D A S H I E L L
H A M M E T T
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
Novella ‘Woman in the Dark’
Book burnings in Nazi
published in Liberty.
Germany.
Condensed version of The Thin Man
Nathanael West: Miss
published in Redbook.
Lonelyhearts.
The Thin Man published. Film
Cain: The Postman Always
version starring William Powell
Rings Twice (banned in
and Myrna Loy released by
Boston).
MGM (five other Thin Man
Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night.
movies would follow between
First Soviet Writers’ Congress
and ).
held in Moscow.
Waugh: A Handful of Dust.
Miller: Tropic of Cancer.
Christie: Murder on the Orient
Express.
Meets Gertrude Stein.
Cain: Double Indemnity.
Wolfe: Of Time and the River.
Lewis: It Can’t Happen Here.
Secretly joins Communist Party.
Mitchell: Gone with the Wind.
Satan Met a Lady, a second film
Eliot: Collected Poems.
version of The Maltese Falcon, is
Dos Passos: The Big Money.
released by Warner Brothers.
Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!
After the Thin Man released by
Lorca killed by Fascist militia
MGM.
in Spain.
Hemingway: To Have and
Have Not.
Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men.
Stevens: The Man with the Blue
Guitar.
Woolf : The Years.
Dos Passos: U.S.A.
Cummings: Collected Poems.
Sartre: Nausea.
Beckett: Murphy.
Waugh: Scoop.
Chandler: The Big Sleep.
Joyce: Finnegans Wake.
Steinbeck: The Grapes of
Wrath.
Hemingway: For Whom the Bell
Tolls.
Chandler: Farewell, My Lovely.
Fitzgerald dies.
Greene: The Power and the
Glory.
xxxviii
C H R O N O L O G Y
HISTORICAL EVENTS
The Twenty-First Amendment, repealing prohibition, ratified. Hitler
appointed Chancellor of Germany. USSR recognised by US. By this year
, of the , banks in the US have failed.
Depth of the Great Depression. Stalin institutes purges of the Communist
Party in Russia. Al Capone sent to Alcatraz.
Transcontinental air service begins in US. Mussolini invades Abyssinia.
Gershwin: Porgy and Bess.
Roosevelt re-elected by a landslide. Spanish Civil War begins. Abdication of
King Edward VIII who wishes to marry the American divorcee Wallace
Simpson. Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin axis.
Japan invades China. First jet engine and nylon stockings. In the US
approximately million visit movies every week. Moscow show trials of
Communist Party opponents of Stalin. Strike against Republic Steel in
Chicago: four strikers killed, forty-four injured.
Germany annexes Austria; Munich crisis. Pogroms against Jews in
Germany. Hitchcock: The Lady Vanishes.
World War II begins. First commercial transatlantic flights. Vivien Leigh
and Clark Gable star in Gone with the Wind.
The Battle of Britain. Penicillin developed. Fall of Paris. Assassination of
Trotsky in Mexico. Churchill prime minister in UK. Extraction of
plutonium from uranium.
xxxix
D A S H I E L L
H A M M E T T
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
Elected president of League of
Fitzgerald: The Last Tycoon
American Writers. John Huston’s
(posthumous).
film version of The Maltese Falcon,
Brecht: Mother Courage.
starring Humphrey Bogart and
Woolf and Joyce die.
Mary Astor, released by Warner
Brothers.
Hammett rejoins army as a
Chandler: The High Window.
private.
Paul: A Narrow Street.
Camus: The Stranger.
Sent to Fort Randall, Alaska.
Chandler: The Lady in the
Co-writes screenplay Watch on the
Lake.
Rhine with Lillian Hellman.
Williams: The Glass Menagerie.
Eliot: Four Quartets.
Honourably discharged as a
Orwell: Animal Farm.
master sergeant. Returns to New
Waugh: Brideshead Revisited.
York.
Thurber: The Thurber Carnival.
Borges: Fictions.
Dreiser dies.
Elected president of Communist-
Chandler wins Mystery
sponsored Civil Rights Congress
Writers of America’s Edgar
of New York. Begins teaching
Allan Poe Award (also in
courses in mystery writing at
).
Jefferson School of Social
Goodis: Dark Passage.
Science.
The Diary of Anne Frank.
Williams: A Streetcar Named
Desire.
Eliot wins Nobel Prize.
Mailer: The Naked and the Dead.
Chandler: The Little Sister.
Faulkner wins Nobel Prize.
Orwell: .
Greene: The Third Man.
Miller: Death of a Salesman.
Chandler: ‘The Simple Art of
Murder’, ‘Goldfish’.
Eliot: The Cocktail Party.
Questioned before US District
Jones: From Here to Eternity.
Court about Civil Rights
Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye.
Congress bail fund. Found guilty
Frost: Complete Poems.
of contempt of court and
sentenced to six months in prison,
where his health deteriorates.
xl
C H R O N O L O G Y
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. US enters war December. Hitler
invades Russia. US introduces ‘lease-lend’ system of aid to Britain. Orson
Welles: Citizen Kane. Irving Berlin: White Christmas. Beginnings of ‘bebop’.
Rommel defeated at El Alamein. Build-up of American air force in Free
China. World’s first nuclear reactor constructed at Chicago University.
Russians defeat Germans at Stalingrad. Allied armies victorious in North
Africa. Allied invasion of Italy.
Allied landings in Normandy; German retreat; liberation of Paris. Roosevelt
elected for fourth term in US. Double Indemnity released (screenplay part
written by Raymond Chandler).
Churchill gives ‘Iron Curtain’ speech. Cold War begins. Unconditional
surrender of Germany. Suicide of Hitler. World War II ends after bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Foundation of United Nations. Truman
president of US; Attlee prime minister in UK.
Film of The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Al Capone dies. Film of Dark Passage starring Bogart and Bacall. India
proclaimed independent.
Jewish state of Israel comes into existence. Month-long coal miners’ strike in
America. Hitchcock: Rope.
Chinese revolution. Northern Atlantic Treaty signed at Washington. Russian
Blockade lifted. Orson Welles stars in The Third Man.
Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses State Department of being riddled with
Communists, and begins the worst of the American blacklist period. Korean
War begins.
President Truman dismisses General MacArthur as commander of the UN
forces in Korea. Rogers and Hammerstein: South Pacific. Hitchcock: Strangers
on a Train (screenplay part written by Chandler). Churchill elected prime
minister in UK.
xli
D A S H I E L L
H A M M E T T
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
Moves to Katonah, New York.
Beckett: Waiting for Godot.
Begins work on a novel;
Ellison: The Invisible Man.
fragment is later published as
O’Connor: Wise Blood.
Tulip in The Big Knockover, a
Steinbeck: East of Eden.
collection of his stories
published in .
Subpoenaed by Senator Joseph
Chandler: The Long Goodbye.
McCarthy to testify before his
Faulkner: Requiem for a Nun.
Senate subcommittee.
Williams: Camino Real.
Hemingway wins Nobel Prize.
Amis: Lucky Jim.
Suffers heart attack at Lillian
Nabokov: Lolita.
Hellman’s house on Martha’s
Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin
Vineyard.
Roof.
Miller: A View from the Bridge.
Osborne: Look Back in Anger.
Brecht dies.
Goodis: Shoot the Piano Player.
Kerouac: On the Road.
Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago
published throughout world
(except USSR).
Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Burroughs: The Naked Lunch.
Grass: The Tin Drum.
Updike: Rabbit, Run.
O’Connor: The Violent Bear It
Away.
Dies of lung cancer on
Hemingway dies.
January in New York
Heller: Catch .
City. Buried at Arlington
Williams: Night of the Iguana.
National Cemetery.
xlii
C H R O N O L O G Y
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Eisenhower elected US president. Gary Cooper stars in High Noon. China
accuses US of waging germ warfare in Korea. Batista overthrows Cuban
government. Accession of Elizabeth II. First contraceptive pill.
Experiments in colour television in the US. Stalin dies.
Communist Party outlawed in US. Marlon Brando stars in On the Waterfront.
Hitchcock: Dial M for Murder and Rear Window. Vietnamese Communists
defeat French at Dien Bien Phu.
Soviets invade Hungary. Suez Crisis. Eisenhower re-elected as US president.
Transatlantic telephone service linking Britain and the US.
Civil Rights Act in US; race riots in southern US.
Alaska becomes th state of US. Bernstein: West Side Story. Hitchcock:
Vertigo. Beginning of space exploration.
Batista flees Cuba; Castro seizes power.
John F. Kennedy elected US president. Brezhnev becomes president of
USSR . John Wayne stars in The Alamo.
Berlin Wall constructed. Yuri Gagarin becomes first man in space.
xliii
