... fiction existed in continental and American literature since at least the nineteenth century, hard-boiled fiction reached its greatest popularity during the 1920s through the 1960s. Critics point out that authors like Dashiell Hammett, who shaped the genre during this era, reinvented the crime fiction style popularized by such predecessors as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe in several ... key ways. Hammett's contemporary, Raymond Chandler, comments on Hammett's contribution to the genre by saying: Hammett was one of a group () who wrote or tried to write realistic mystery fic...

• Word Count: 1452
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate