Elementary, my dear Watson”--An Icon Is Born
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A History of Detective Fiction: Literary Origins
By: John Gaines
Detective and crime-related stories are one of the most popular genres of fiction. In literary form, detective novels are so numerous that publishing companies devote entire labels to the genre and release hundreds of entries per year. Detective/crime-related narratives have become a major part of television programming, with networks basing their entire primetime schedule around crime-related series.
Detective fiction is such an integral part of the current literary landscape that many people have difficulty remembering all its subgenres, popular works, and notable authors. This series explores the history of detective fiction, the authors who were a major influence on its development, and books and films in its major subgenres.
Gothic Genesis
Despite the continuing widespread popularity of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Doyle did not originate the detective story. This credit must be given to another author of the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe. In addition to being a major contributor to the literary traditions of Gothic horror and romanticism, Poe also originated the detective story with his character C. Auguste Dupin. When the character first appeared in The Murders in The Rue Morgue (1841), the word detective did not even exist; the character’s name “Dupin” suggests the English word dupe, or deception, which Dupin utilizes in order to obtain the information he requires to solve a case.
Many of Dupin’s characteristics heavily influenced character portrayals of detectives throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. His cold, logical method or problem solving, upper-class background, and emphasis on intense reading for clues would remain consistent in his portrayals throughout two other Poe stories, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter (1844). Poe only published three Dupin stories over his lifetime before his death in 1849, although other authors have used the character--who is now considered public domain--posthumously in novels such as The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1. Cinematic adaptations of the Dupin stories are rare in comparison to films featuring Sherlock Holmes, although Universal released adaptations of Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1932 and The Mystery of Marie Roget in 1942.
Elementary, my dear Watson”--An Icon Is Born
If Poe was the inventor of the detective novel, it was Arthur Conan Doyle who truly cemented it as a popular literary genre. The first obvious difference between the two authors was in the sheer volume of output. As opposed to Poe, who only created three stories featuring Dupin, Doyle created 56 short stories and four novels featuring Sherlock Holmes. The four Holmes novels Doyle wrote are; A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901) and The Valley of Fear (1914). The first series of short stories appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1891, and was responsible for the dramatic rise in the character’s popularity. They were also published the collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow, and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
One major difference between Doyle’s detective tales and Poe’s is Doyle’s inclusion of a sidekick character to assist Holmes. Dr. Watson, although steadfastly loyal to Holmes, stands in sharp contrast to him. His approaches to problem-solving are populist and simplistic while those of Holmes are complex and sophisticated. He sees the surface of the crime while Holmes tries to plunge into the psychological depths of the criminal. He is emotional while Holmes is scientific. Yet it is overwhelmingly Watson who gives the Holmes stories their point of view, supplying narration for 53 of the short stories and all four of the novels. The interaction between Holmes and Watson and their differing methods of problem solving is just as enjoyable for the reader as the actual mystery to solve. This relationship is perhaps even more important in the various film adaptations of the Holmes stories.