„Hrne se na nás lavina detektivek“
‘An Avalanche of Detective Stories is Hurtling towards Us’

The Role of Published Series in Establishing the Detective Fiction Genre in Czech Literary Culture

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the publishing history of series in the detective fiction genre. In this sense, the series is perceived as a significant publishing gesture, with the potential to create and shape genre awareness. During the 1920s, there was a gradual increase in the number of published series of detective fiction literature and the number of publishers of this type of reading material. In the final years of the 1920s, there was a rapid increase in the number of books in genre-defined series that entered the book market. In addition to the increase in the number of published series, which can be interpreted as a movement along the horizontal axis, the author also observes a second shift, which occurred simultaneously on the axiological or value axis. The paper follows the repercussions of the shift in this second line of interpretation, describing the change in the character of the publishers who published such book series, which ranged from smaller companies that primarily published scientific and professional literature, through publishers with a portfolio of popular reading material, to publishers that aspired to publish artistically discerning literature.

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