The Refined Reader aims to take a look at the journey to where we are as readers today. It's part history, part commentary - providing a brief, conversational summary of various aspects of our bookish past and comparing it to how it has affected us in modern times. I love history, but I am no historian, and while I plan to do my research, if there are any errors, please let me know! This is as much a learning venture for me as I hope it is for my blog visitors!
The mystery story as a genre is relatively new in our literary history - it began in the early 1800s with the rise of an organized police force and detectives as well as a higher literacy rate. The 1819 crime novella Mademoiselle de Scudéri. A Tale from the Times of Louis XIV by E.T.A. Hoffman helped to inspire the father of the mystery story - Edgar Allan Poe in his novel The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841). "Poe was one of the first to shift the focus of mystery stories from the aesthetics of the situation to a more intellectual reality, moving the story from "a focus on the superficial trappings of eerie setting and shocking event to a study of the criminal's mind." (Mystery Net)
What followed was a boom time in mystery with works by Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and of course the creation of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Arthur Doyle who played a major part in popularizing the genre. With Holmes, the mystery became even more of an intellectual exercise, placing even more focus in the power of human agency and reason.
The mystery story has many different sub genres today, that do not always include a logical solution to a mystery (in the case of paranormal for instance) but in most cases a mystery encompasses a crime, the use of logic to solve the crime, and a great deal of suspense. The genre has also endured very well in popular television series and films.
Do you have a favorite mystery story and/or detective?
(My favorite is Agatha Christie and all her Hercule Poirot novels!)
Sources:
Wikipedia
Mystery Net