Who wrote and published the first detective story?
The first DETECTIVE STORY was Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, published in Graham’s Magazine, Philadelphia in April 1841. The story was set in Paris and Poe’s detective was an impoverished and eccentric chevalier, Auguste Dupin. The hero was necessarily French, as French was the only country that had developed either private or police detection as a distinct profession by that date. It was reissued as a 124- cents paperback in 1843, anticipating the form in which the majority of detective tales were to be issued in later years.
The first detective story published in Britain was Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”. It was originally contained in an American annual called The Gift (published September 1844), and appeared in, abridged form in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal for 30 November 1844. In this story the detective Dupin makes his third and last appearance, having featured also in Poe’s 1842 tale “The Mystery of Marie Roget”.
