On 14th of April 1841, the short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe, was first published. It was to be the start of our fascination with the detective story. C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who solves the mystery of the brutal murder of two women.
When it was printed in ‘Graham’s Magazine’, the world didn’t even have such a things as a ‘detective’. It led the way for the format of slowly uncovering the perpetrator of a crime by following the evidence trail. Today we are inundated in both books and on the screen of detectives of all kinds.
Edgar Allan Poe was the Editor of Graham’s Magazine when the short story was published and was paid $56 , compared to the $9 for ‘The Raven’ , this was indeed a very good fee.
As well as inspiring the writings of other authors of detective novels and creations of fictional characters, it has also been subject to many adaptations, including on film and gaming.