This method of expanding the story to book length was clearly not one that could be generally used, so later authors of novel-length detective stories introduced more characters and various red herrings, that is, plot lines that lead to incorrect conclusions. Bentley’s method of stretching out the story was to break the narrative into two parts-in the first part the detective solves the crime but points to the wrong perpetrator the second part takes place years later, when the case is taken up again and the right criminal is finally discovered. Bentley ( 1913), has traditionally been seen as one of the first novel-length detective fictions. The very popular Trent’s Last Case, by E. The persistence of the short-story format in the 19th century was due in part to the influence of Poe’s Dupin 1840s detective short stories, but also it was easier to sustain suspense in a short story than a book-length narrative. Most 19th-century detective fictions were in short-story form, many published in the Strand Magazine starting in 1891. The settings of detective fictions are usually contemporary with the time written and frequently take place in urban areas. The detective reveals the solution only at the end of the narrative, when he or she explains how the solution was reached, often through the scientific method-conclusions drawn from material evidence.
#Name of novel sherlock holmes appeared in professional
In these stories, a mystery or a crime occurs, and an amateur or professional detective is called in to solve it. By 1888, there were eight hundred officers in the CID.Īt almost the same period as the detective branch of the Metropolitan Police was evolving, the genre of detective fiction was also emerging, mainly in the short-story form. The word detective entered the English language in the mid-1800s, but it is ultimately derived from the Latin detegere, meaning “to uncover.” The label “detective” was not in common usage until there were actual official detectives, which did not happen until the mid-Victorian period, especially after the detective branch of the Metropolitan Police was instituted in 1842 with eight professionals, including two “inspectors.” In 1878, the detective branch was reorganized and renamed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Both detective fictions (now nearly all novel length) and critical interest in the genre from a variety of perspectives are now an international phenomenon, and detective novels dominate many best-seller lists.
The popularity of the genre has only continued to grow.
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In the second half of that century, this critical interest expanded into the academic world. Finally, from the 1890s into the early 20th century, a plethora of new detective fictions, still in short-story form for the most part, appeared not only in Britain but also in France and the United States.ĭetective fiction has always been popular, but serious critical interest in the genre only developed in the 20th century. Although Poe’s 1840s stories as well as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, which first appeared in the 1880s, are probably the most well known of 19th-century detective fictions, a number of other writers of generically recognizable detective fiction published stories in the almost fifty years between Poe and Conan Doyle, including a number that featured female detectives. Most critics of detective fiction see the beginning of the genre in the three stories of Edgar Allan Poe which feature his amateur detective, Auguste Dupin, and were published in the 1840s. A few longer detective fictions were published as separate books in the 19th century, but book-length detective fiction, such as that by Agatha Christie, was really a product of the 20th century.
The form of detective fiction throughout most of the 19th century was the short story published in various periodicals of the period.
In the Poetics, Aristotle defines a successful plot as one that has a conflict (which can include, and often does include, a “mystery”) that rises to a climax, followed by a resolution of the conflict, a plot line that describes not only Oedipus Rex but also every Sherlock Holmes story.Ī particular genre of mystery writing is defined by the mystery at the center of the story that is crucially, definitively solved by a particular person known as a detective, either private or police, who by ratiocination (close observation coupled with logical patterns of thought based on material evidence) uncovers and sorts out the relevant facts essential to a determination of who did the crime and how and why. Sophocles’ Oedipus must solve the mystery of the plague decimating Thebes the play is a dramatization of how he ultimately “detects” the culprit responsible for the plague, who turns out to be Oedipus himself. From ancient Greece on, fictional narratives have entailed deciphering mystery.
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