Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in Rue Morgue" is published - April 20th, 1841

On this day in 1841, Edgar Allan Poe published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a tale widely considered to be the first modern detective story. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers a little bit more about history
every day. I'm Gabelusier, and today we're investigating The Murders

(00:25):
in the Rue Morgue by American writer and poet Edgar
Allan Poe. But don't worry if you've never read it before,
we won't be spoiling who done it in the episode.
You'll have to solve that mystery for yourself. The day
was April one. Edgar Allan Poe published The Murders in

(00:49):
the Room Morgue, a tale that is widely considered to
be the first modern detective story. It first appeared in
Graham's Magazine, a monthly literary journal that published short stories,
critical reviews, and news about music and fashion. Edgar Allan
Poe had been hired as the journal's editor just two
months earlier. The position allowed him the chance to publish

(01:12):
some of his own original stories, and the first one
he chose to include was The Murders in the Room Morgue.
Pose editorial control turned out to have a profound effect
on the literary world, launching the popularity of detective stories
or mysteries, and paving the way for many more to come.
You might be wondering what exactly makes a story a mystery. Well,

(01:36):
for one thing, the driving action of a mystery story
is the solution to a crime, usually a murder, but
sometimes a theft or kidnapping. A mystery also follows some
kind of detective professional or otherwise as they try to
determine who did the crime and why. You can have
what's called a cozy mystery, like a Miss Marple story

(01:57):
or a Father Brown mystery, and in these the action
is usually set in a small town, making the violence
of the crime all the more shocking. On the other hand,
there are hard boiled mysteries. These are the ones where
the hero is a world weary cop or a private investigator,
like the Sam Spade character and Dashiel Hammett's books or
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Both of these kinds of mysteries

(02:21):
fall under the larger genre of suspense, along with crime
novels and thrillers. Mystery stories tend to be more cerebral
and less violent, while crime stories are more dramatic and
thrillers are more emotional, playing up the fear and dread
of the characters. Each of these kinds of suspense stories
have common elements, such as crimes and detectives, but they

(02:44):
also have sharply defined distinctions that make them their own
unique things. It's impossible to say for certain who wrote
the first ever suspense story, but in terms of modern fiction,
the person who generally gets the credit is Edgar Allan Poe.
His story The Murders in the Room Morgue is the
earliest example in which a character solves a mystery by

(03:06):
analyzing facts and following clues. Poe even had a special
name for this logic based form of deduction. He called
it radios nation, or reasoned train of thought. In the story,
Poe's amateur detective Monsieur c August Dupin, decides to put
his reason to use by trying to solve the murder

(03:28):
of two women in Paris. The details of the investigation
are recounted by Dupin's roommate, an unnamed man, who is
fascinated by the detectives analytical prowess. Following the success of
Rue Morgue, Poe wrote further mystery stories using this technique,
including the Mystery of Marie roget in eighteen forty two

(03:49):
and the Purloined Letter in eighteen forty four. To be clear,
Poe didn't consider his mystery stories to be a whole
new kind of fiction. Instead, he recognized is that the
groundwork for mysteries had been laid by earlier authors, and
that he was simply reinventing it for the modern age.
In eighteen forty six, he wrote a letter to a

(04:10):
friend explaining the appeal of his new approach. He said,
quote these tales of radio Senation, oh, most of their
popularity to being something old in a new key. I
do not mean to say that they are not ingenious,
but people think them more ingenious than they are on
account of their method and air of method. Two Poe,

(04:32):
it was Radio Senation that was innovative, the idea of
joining keen powers of observation with a reason to train
of thought. But what Poe probably didn't know is that
he was also establishing elements that would later become trademarks
of an entire genre. For instance, Poe was careful to
lay out clues throughout his story so that his readers

(04:53):
could have a crack at solving the mystery themselves, a
tactic that future writers like Agatha Christie would put to
good use in their own stories. Another defining feature that
Poe introduced was the idea of establishing a recurring detective
character who appeared in multiple stories. Poe Zone detective see
August Dupin, appeared in all three of the mysteries I mentioned,

(05:16):
paving the way for other serialized detectives like Sherlock Holmes
and Hercule Poirot. Following the publication of The Murders in
the Room, Morgue, detective stories began to grow into full
length novels these days. The first modern mystery novel is
credited to Charles Warren Adams, who wrote under the pen
name Charles Felix. His story, The Notting Hill Mystery, debuted

(05:41):
in eighteen sixty two, and, like post stories from a
few decades prior, it included many elements that have since
come to define the mystery genre. That story initially ran
as eight installments in a once a week magazine, and
was then published in book form three years later, where
it was met with rave review. One reviewer took pains

(06:02):
to explain how readers should approach the new genre, saying, quote,
this is best understood like a game of solitaire, or
like a puzzle that you've been handed to figure out.
Edgar Allan Poe may not have written his own detective novel,
but he did directly inspire the creation of one of
the genre's most enduring characters, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

(06:25):
Conan Doyle wasn't shy about crediting his inspiration either. He
once wrote, quote, each of Poe's detective stories is a
route from which a whole literature has developed. Where was
the detective story until Poe breathe the breath of life
into it. If you compare pose Dupin character with Conan

(06:46):
Doyle's Sherlock, the similarities are pretty striking. They're both armchair
detectives rather than professionals. They're both brought in to consult
on cases that have the local police stumped. They even
both rely on unassuming sidekicks for help with their cases.
Dupan has his unnamed narrator and Sherlock Holmes has Dr Watson.

(07:08):
But okay, so Post certainly left a lasting impression, but
he wasn't the only one. In fact, there's at least
one famous detective trope for which Conan Doyle deserves sole
credit the magnifying glass. Sherlock Holmes is believed to be
the first fictional character to ever use a magnifying glass
to help solve a mystery. That may not sound as

(07:30):
impressive as breathing life into a genre, but it was
still an important development for detective stories. I mean good
luck illustrating radio sennation on a book cover. I'm Gay
Blusier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you enjoyed today's show,

(07:52):
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d i HC Show, and if you have any comments
er suggestions, feel free to drop us a line at
this day at I heart media dot com. Thanks to
Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to you
for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for
another day in History class.