Edgar Allan Poe
Creator of the Modern
Detective Story
From “The Purloined Letter” to
the 21st Century Mystery Genre
Edgar Allan Poe is best
known today for his gothic
stories of psychological
horror.
However, his most enduring
legacy in the world of
literature is the single-handed
creation of detective fiction
and what he called,
“ratiocination” – the process
of logical reasoning used by
his fictional detective,
Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin.
Dupin, a Frenchman, was the star of Poe’s three
true detective stories: “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and
“The Purloined Letter.”
In these three short stories, Poe created
the most common conventions of the
genre:
• The icon of the brilliant, solitary,
amateur sleuth
• The slightly dim companion of the
detective
• The friend also narrates the story
•The conventional, bumbling police
•The ‘locked room’ mystery
Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin
• The device of ‘hidden in plain sight’
Dupin was never described
physically, as the focus was meant
to be Dupin’s mental powers.
Most literary experts consider
Dupin to be Poe himself.
A Brief History of Crime and Writing
Before Poe created detective fiction in the 19th century,
there was very little crime fiction.
Why did it take so long?
•For most of human history, “crime” was
the same as “sin”
•Also, “law enforcement” was concerned
with enforcing the privilege (“private law”)
of the ruling classes. Sheriffs and other
agents were answerable only to the
aristocracy or the monarch, not the abstract
of justice.
•The heroes of crime were the
criminals – like Robin Hood - who
were stealing from the oppressive
rulers.
•Torture was the accepted method of
finding culprits
•The punishment for crime was most
often maiming or execution
• The Age of Reason (The
Enlightenment) gave rise to the idea
that everyone should be equal under
the law, from the poorest to the most
powerful. People began to think that
torture was immoral and unreliable.
• By the 19th century, the ideas of
the Enlightenment had trickled
down to the masses.
• The scientific method was being
developed, creating the idea that
criminal convictions should be
based on more than circumstantial
evidence.
• The Industrial Revolution gave rise
to larger urban populations, which
created the opportunity for
anonymous crime.
• “The Newgate Calendar, or, Malefactors Bloody
Register from 1700 to the Present Time” was
published in 1773. Newgate was one of the most
notorious British prisons, and “The Newgate
Calendar” was a collection of sensational
confessions from condemned criminals.
• In 1778, the Bow Street Runners were
formed as an information-gathering unit,
which lasted until 1829
• In 1827, the anonymous and fictional
account of “Richmond; or, Scenes from
the Life of a Bow Street Runner, drawn
up from his Private Memoranda” is
published.
Bow Street Runner Headquarters
• In 1829, Sir Robert Peel created the first
British police force – over some public
protest.
• 1828-1829, François-Eugène Vidocq
publishes “Memoirs of Vidocq,
Principal Agent of the French Police
Until 1827.”
A “Peeler” or “Bobbie”
François-Eugène
Vidocq
Until there were police, until there was interest in and
understanding of the scientific method, until the concept of
“innocent until proven guilty,” until there were detectives… There
could be no detective fiction.
Edgar Allan Poe was fortunate, in so far as his literary legacy, to
be living in a time ripe for the first detective stories.
But was the public ready?
Illustration for “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
Poe’s Influences
Poe was very familiar with French
literature and it is known that he read
Voltaire’s Zadig, ou La Destinée
(“Zadig, or the Book of Fate”)
François-Marie Arouet,
better known as Voltaire
In Votaire’s work, the hero Zadig
uses logical evaluation of the
evidence to identify the king’s dog
and the queen’s horse.
Poe’s Influences
Poe also read Vidocq’s book of memoirs.
Dupin, Poe’s detective, acknowledges Vidocq in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”:
“Vidocq, for example, was a good guesser and a persevering man. But,
without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his
investigations. He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He
might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so
doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole.
There is such a thing as being too profound.”
In “The Purloined Letter,” Poe also describes Vidocq’s method of searching a house,
used by the character of Monsieur G------, the Prefect of the Parisian police.
At the time the Dupin stories were published, Vidocq was under suit by the French
police for making them look bad by his success! The story was followed in American
newspapers and would have been known to Poe.
Fun Fact!
About a decade after Poe’s death, Lincoln – who was a
huge fan of the Dupin stories – used similar detective skills
to secure an acquittal for a legal client.
When Lincoln ran for president, his admiration of Poe’s
detective fiction was a point in his favor. One of his
supporters, the author William Dean Howells, said in his
campaign biography of Lincoln:
“The bent of his mind is mathematical and metaphysical, and he
is therefore pleased with the absolute and logical method of
Poe’s tales and sketches, in which the problem of mystery is
given, and wrought out into everyday facts by processes of
cunning analysis. It is said that he suffers no year to pass without
a perusal of this author.”
Lincoln also wrote “The Trailer Murder,” a detective story
based on a case from his own experience as a lawyer.
Another Fun Fact!
Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinean
writer, was also a super huge fan of
Poe.
He believed that the ghost of Poe
dictated detective stories to him. As
further homage, he also consciously
imitated Poe’s writing style.
Publishing history
• 1841, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” published in
Graham’s Magazine
• 1842, “The Mystery of Marie Roget: A Sequel to The
Murders in the Rue Morgue,” also published in
Graham’s
• 1844, “The Purloined Letter,” published in The Gift: 1845
•All three stories, among others, were published by
Wiley & Putnam in 1846
• Poe did not think much of his own detective
stories: “These tales of ratiocination owe most of
their popularity to being something in a new key. I
do not mean to say they are not ingenious – but
people think them more ingenious than they are –
on account of their method and air of method”
(1846)
• Poe did, however, trade on their popularity
to persuade publishers to take his later
works.
First page of Poe’s manuscript of
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
Poe’s Recipe for a Detective Story
“The thesis of the novel may be regarded as based upon curiosity.
Every point is so arranged as to perplex the reader, and whet his desire for
elucidation… …There can be no question that, by such means as these,
many points which… would have been comparatively insipid if given in full
detail in a natural sequence, are endued with the interest of mystery.
“The design of mystery, however, being once determined by an
author, it becomes imperative, first, that no undue or inartistical means be
employed to conceal the secret of the plot; and secondly, that the secret be
well kept…
…A failure to preserve it until the proper moment of dénouement throws all
into confusion. If the mystery leak out, against the author’s will, his purposes
are immediately at odds and ends, for he proceeds upon the supposition
that certain impressions do exist, which do not exist, in the mind of his
readers.”
(from Poe’s essay on Charles Dickens, 1841)
A New Genre Is Born
Initially, there were no imitators, due to the conventions of the
Victorian novel versus those of the magazine serial, and because
Poe’s critical acclaim lay with his poetry and horror stories.
However, in 1887, the first Sherlock Holmes story was published. Its
author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, always acknowledged Holme’s
forerunner Dupin and the inspiration of Poe.
In 1909, to honor the 100th anniversary of Poe’s birth, Doyle gave a
speech at the Author’s Club in London:
“It is not, I think, upon his strange and haunting poems that Poe’s
fame will rest… But his tales were one of the great landmarks and
starting points in the literature of the last century… For those tales
have been so pregnant with suggestion, so stimulating to the minds
of others, that it may be said of many of them that each is a root
from which a whole literature has developed… Where was the
detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Direct Descendants of Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes
Originally published 1887-1927
GK Chesterton and
Father Brown
Originally published
1911-1935
Agatha Christie and
Hercule Poirot
Originally published
1920-1975
Dorothy Sayers and
Lord Peter Wimsey
Originally published
1923-1998
Poe, Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, and Sayers have
all remained continuously in print since their first
appearances. In 1940, nearly 100 years after Poe’s
death, the “Golden Age” of mystery writing began,
with Christie and Sayers at the apex of their careers.
The mystery genre, with its amateur detectives and
the invitation to the reader to solve the puzzle first,
remains one of the most popular mass-market
genres of all time.
Poe’s poetry and gothic horror stories may be read
today in classrooms across the world, but his most
enduring and wide-reaching literary legacy is the
creation of the modern detective story.
Some of My Favorite Authors Who
Give Mysterious Nods to Poe
Works Cited
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Bibliography of Detectives, Their Assistants and Their Rivals in Crime,
Mystery and Adventure Fiction 1795-1995. Aldershot, England: Scolar
Press, 1997.
Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective
Story. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1943.
Herbert, Rosemary, ed. The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Murch, A.E. The Development of the Detective Novel. Port Washington, NY:
Kennikat Press, 1968.
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Books, 1992. 593-602.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Purloined Letter.” The Gift. Philadelphia: Carey and
Hart, 1845. 41-61.
Rollyson, Carl, ed. Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction: Revised
Edition. Vol. 4. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press Inc., 2008.
Stein, Aaron Marc. “The Mystery Story in Cultural Perspective.” The Mystery
Story. Ed. John Ball. Del Mar, CA: Publisher’s Inc., 1976.
Steinbrummer, Chris and Otto Penzler, eds. Encyclopedia of Mystery and
Detection. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc, 1976.
Works Cited Continued
Symons, Julian. Mortal Consequences: A History – From the Detective Story to
the Crime Novel. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1972.
Thomas, Ronald. “Detection in the Victorian Novel.” The Cambridge
Companion to the Victorian Novel. Ed. Deirdre David. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001. 169-191.
Woeller, Waltraud and Bruce Cassiday. The Literature of Crime and Detection:
An Illustrated History from Antiquity to the Present. New York: The
Ungar Publishing Company, 1988.
Worthington, Heather. The Rise of the Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century
Popular Fiction. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Wright, Thomas. "Edgar Allan Poe." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American
Literature. Ed. Jay Parini. Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
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