On this day, April 20 in 1841, Edgar Allen Poe published what is widely considered the first detective story.
Poe’s short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” featured the brilliant C. Auguste Dupin, an eccentric who solves the murder of two women after finding a hair at the crime scene that does not appear to be human. His reasoning and intellectual powers are so great, it appeared that he could read minds. Poe calls this “ratiocination.”
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” became the prototype for future fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. The tale contains all the elements of mystery fiction: the eccentric detective, the red herring, the bumbling cops, the first-person narration by his sidekick.
Poe died eight years later at the age of 40, the cause of death itself a mystery. Poe was found delirious, wandering the streets of Baltimore in someone else’s clothes. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died Oct. 7, 1849.
