Augusta Groner (1850-1929), was a detective's writer who sometimes appeared under the more masculine pseudonym of August or Auguste Groner. She also published under the pseudonyms Olaf Björnson, A. of the Paura, Renorga, and Metis.
We don't know a lot about her early life. She was the daughter of an accountant. She was born in Vienna on April 16, 1850, and was first published in 1869. One of her brothers was the painter Franz Kopallik, and another was the theologian Josef Kopallik. She worked as a school teacher until she married journalist, Joseph Groner in 1879. Around 1890, she turned to crime fiction, creating the first serial police detective in German crime literature, Joseph Müller, who appears for the first time in the novella The Case of the Pocket Diary Found in the Snow, which was published in 1890. Her first novel, The Case of the Lamp that Went Out, was published in 1899.
Outside of Austria, she is most known for her crime stories. Although, she wrote several juvenile stories and historicals. Groner's work is often overlooked in the lists of women pioneers of detective fiction. I am sure that part of the reason she remains unknown to many American readers is that her stories were written in German. Fortunately for us, Groner's work has been translated and adapted by Grace Isabel Colbron (1869-1948).
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