Raymond Chandler was born in 1888 and published his first story in 1933 in the pulp magazine Black Mask. By the time he published his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939), featuring, as did all his major works, the iconic private eye Philip Marlowe, it was clear that he had not only mastered a genre but had set a standard wo which others could only aspire. Chandler created a body of work that ranks with the best of twentieth-century literature. He died in 1959.