The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is Edgar Allan Poe's short story introducing C. Auguste Dupin, an eccentric Parisian amateur reasoner who solves a brutal locked-room double murder that has stumped the police, by reasoning from physical evidence and observed detail rather than confession or informant testimony. Poe's own term for Dupin's method was ratiocination, and the story's pairing of a brilliant amateur detective with an admiring, less perceptive narrator became the template later detective fiction, most famously Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, would follow closely enough that Doyle himself repeatedly acknowledged the debt.
Facts
Classification
Original Language Composed, From (Year) FAQs
Is The Murders in the Rue Morgue the first detective story?
It is considered one of the first detective stories and set the pattern for the genre.
Britannica calls it one of the first detective stories, not simply the first. Poe published it in Graham's Magazine in 1841. Its importance lies in the pattern it set: an amateur detective, C. Auguste Dupin, solves an apparently inexplicable mystery by ratiocination, which Britannica glosses as reasoning and logic. Britannica says the story shaped a new genre of fiction, and that Dupin's stamp can be seen on Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
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Authored By
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
In Genre
The genre's founding work.
Source The Cambridge History of the English Short Story
In the Other Atlases
Original Language
Also in Language Atlas: the original language of this subject.
Originated In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannicatier 1
Sources
1. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Lead
published in Graham's Magazine in 1841
Lead sentence
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by the American writer and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841.
Original language statement
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by the American writer and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841.
View the Source 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Cambridge History of the English Short Story
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