The first, The Notting Hill Mystery, was published in 1865 and written under the pen name Charles Felix, who is believed to be Charles Warren Adams, sole proprietor of the publishing house Saunders, Otley, and Company. The Moonstone’s title as the first detective novel is contested by two other books. The Moonstone set the standards for the detective novel formula – an enormous diamond is stolen from a Hindu temple and resurfaces at a birthday party in an English manor, and with numerous narrators and suspects, the story weaves through superstitions, romance, humor and suspicion to solve the puzzle. Collins had “Author of The Woman in White and other works of fiction” engraved on his tombstone. The Woman in White is a gripping tale of murder, madness and mistaken identity that is so beloved it has never been out of print. Nearly twenty years after Poe’s story, Wilkie Collins published The Woman in White (1859), which is considered the first mystery novel, and The Moonstone (1868), generally considered the first detective novel.
First published in the April 1841 issue of Graham’s Magazine, the short story tells the tale of an amateur detective who sets out to solve the grisly murders of a mother and daughter within a locked room of their apartment on the Rue Morgue. Although there are examples of puzzle stories that reach back through time to when some of the earliest poems or tales were written down, most people agree that the first modern ‘detective story’ is The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe.
This spurred the advent of professional detectives whose chief job was to investigate crimes.
The rapid growth of urban centers in the 19th century meant that more police were needed. This copy of The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a 1932 “photoplay edition” listed for sale by Heritage Book Shop.
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