The Idea of Education in Golden Age Detective Fiction

This book presents an exploration of how Golden Age detective fiction encounters educational ideas, particularly those forged by the transformative educational policymaking of the interwar period.
Charting the educational policy and provision of the era, and referring to works by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edmund Crispin and others, this book explores the educational capacity and agency of literary detectives, the learning spaces of the genre and the kinds of knowledge that are made available to inquirers both inside and outside the text. It is argued that the genre explores a range of contemporaneous propositions on the balance between academic curriculum and practicum, length of school life and the value of lifelong learning. This book's closing chapter considers the continuing pedagogic value for contemporary classrooms of engaging with the genre as a rich discursive and imaginative space for exploring educational ideas.
Framing Golden Age detective fiction as a genre profoundly concerned with learning, this book will be highly relevant reading for academics, postgraduate students and scholars involved in the fields of English language arts, twentieth-century literature and the theories of learning more broadly. Those interested in detective fiction and interdisciplinary literary studies will also find the volume of interest.

List of contents

Introduction 1. Learning in the Age of Sleuthing 2. Detective as learner and teacher 3. The learning spaces of Golden Age Detective Fiction 4. The limits of detective learning 5. Detective fiction in education

About the author

Roger Dalrymple is Visiting Professor in Education at Oxford Brookes University, and Senior Research Fellow in Education at Regent's Park College, Oxford University, UK.
Andrew Green is Senior Lecturer in English Education and Deputy Director of the Global Lives Research Centre at Brunel University London, UK.

Product details

• Authors: Roger Dalrymple, Andrew Green
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 28.11.2025
• EAN: 9780367725044
• ISBN: 978-0-367-72504-4
• No. of pages: 142
• Weight: 300 g
• Illustrations: schwarz-weiss Illustrationen, Raster,schwarz-weiss, Zeichnungen, schwarz-weiss
• Series: Literature and Education
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; EDUCATION / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Mystery & Detective, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Philosophy & theory of education, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Philosophy and theory of education, Teaching of a specific subject, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Primary & middle schools, Primary and middle schools