Poe, Father of Detective Fiction
(This page is under construction.)
Poe is the unchallenged creator of the modern detective story. Virtually
all of the conventions we recognize today originated in his writings. Sherlock
Holmes may have referred disparagingly to Dupin, but Arthur Conan Doyle
himself acknowledged his debt to Poe.
The Dupin Trilogy:
"Murders in the Rue Morgue"
"Mystery of Marie Roget"
"The Purloined Letter"
Other Tales of Ratiocination:
"Thou Art the Man"
"The Man of the Crowd"
Brophy, Brigid, "Detective Fiction: A Modern Myth of Violence?," Hudson
Review, XVIII, Spring 1965, pp. 11-30.
Fusco, Richard, Fin de millenaire: Poe's Legacy for the Detective Story,
Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1993.
Haycraft, Howard, "Father of the Detective Story," Saturday Review of
Literature, XXIV, August 23, 1941, pp. 12-15.
Irwin, John T., The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the
Analytic Detective Story, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
Kopley, Richard, Edgar Allan Poe and "The Philadelpia Saturday News,"
Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1991. (This pamphlet includes references
to several possible sources used by Poe.)
Mathews, Brander, "Poe and the Detective Story," Scribner's Magazine,
XLII, August 1907, pp. 287-293.
Paul, Raymond, Who Murdered Mary Rodgers?, New Jersey: Prentice
Rosenbach, A. W. S., "Trail of Scarlet," Saturday Evening Post,
CCV, October 1, 1932, pp. 8-9, 32, 34, 36.
Walsh, John, Poe the Detective: The Curious Circumstances Behind
"The Mystery of Marie Roget", New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University
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Williams, Valentine, "The Detective in Fiction," Fortnightly Review,
No. 128, September 1930, pp. 380-392.