Edgar Allen Poe is one of the greatest American writers. He is credited with inventing the maverick detective genre, In this type of crime story we are presented with a mystery, perhaps a murder, a disappearance or strange and disturbing behavior, which must be explained by a reclusive but brilliant protagonist. The genre began with Poe’s 1841 tale, The Murder’s in Rue Morgue. In this storey Poe introduces us to detective Charles Auguste Dupin. The story is narrated by Dupin’s nameless but nonetheless fascinated friend. Dupin is brought in to solve the double murder of a mother and daughter who have died under gruesome and mysterious circumstances.
Poe himself would die in a way reminiscent of the genre he created On October 3rd 1849, Journalist Joseph Walker of the Baltimore Sun was visiting the pub Gunner’s Hall. It was here that he came across a delirious and dreamy eyed man who was clearly in need of medical attention. The man introduced himself as Edgar Allan Poe. At Poe’s request, Walker took him to his friend Joseph Snodgrass. Snodgrass took Poe to Washington University Hospital, where he was placed in the care of Dr John Moran. Poe was feverish, and unable to make much sense. It was a pitiful sight. On October 7th 1849, Edgar Allan Poe, poet, storywriter and master of the macabre, had died. Moran seems to have been unsure of the cause of death, but The Baltimore Clipper reported it as “congestion of the brain.”
Many other explanations have been proposed including alcoholism, diabetes and brain cancer. Another possibility is that Poe was beaten up by politically motivated thugs in a practice known as ‘cooping’. Victims would be threatened with violence or bribed with alcohol. They would then be disguised and forced to vote several times for the same candidate. Poe did appear to wearing another mans clothes, and Gunner’s Hall was being used as a polling station at the time.
Poe’s death could have been a combination of assault and ill health. Though mysterious, the true cause, if it is ever determined, will probably be quite mundane. But the same cannot be said of the Murders In the Rue Morgue. In the story, the police come across the bodies of a young woman and her mother, brutally murdered in an apartment apparently sealed form the inside. As in other stories of the genre, the police hastily come to a conclusion and arrest the wrong man. Dupin solves the case through the process of ratiocination – reasoning and logic – to solve a crime. The explanation proves to be a bizarre one; the murders were committed by an escaped orangutan. This I believe would inspire Arthur Conan Doyle when the wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles. The two stories both involve the crime being committed by an animal, although in Poe’s story, the killings are entirely accidental. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, the said animal has been trained to attack human beings. Edgar Allan Poe was buried in an unmarked grave. By 1875 a new monument had been dedicated too him by his friends and family. With Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s authorship of “A Study In Scarlet” in 1887, Poe’s creation of the maverick detective had taken on a life of its own; the reclusive but brilliant individual who solves the unsolvable through observation and deduction. But I think it was Conan Doyle who would properly develop the genre. Poe had the idea, Conan Doyle watered it and made it grow. The crucial thing is for the writer to “play fair” with the audience. All the clues must be presented to the reader; all the facts must be present. The mystery is then solved by the withdrawn but brilliant individual who realizes what information is important and what must be discarded. At the end the protagonists chain of reasoning is clear. The audience is baffled as to how they did not see the answer, when all the clues were right infront of us.
Edgar Allan Poe | Biography, Poems, Short Stories, & Facts | Britannica
Edgar Allan Poe | The Poetry Foundation
Edgar Allan Poe’s Hatchet Jobs | National Endowment for the Humanities
Edgar Allan Poe: Beyond the Horror
Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Published in 2014 by Arcturus Publishers Introduction by Dr Brook Haley. Illustrations by Harry Clark