Poe Publishes The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Edgar Allan Poe published The Murders in the Rue Morgue in the April 1841 issue of Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia, where he served as editor. The story introduced C. Auguste Dupin, a Parisian amateur who solves a double murder through what Poe termed ratiocination, systematic logical deduction. Poe drew partly on the memoirs of Francois-Eugene Vidocq, founder of the French Surete. The story established conventions subsequently adopted across detective fiction: the eccentric analytical protagonist, the less perceptive companion narrator, the locked-room mystery, and the police unable to solve the case.