Beginning of Detective Fiction in the Victorian Age (1837-1901):

Tracing the Roots of the Detective Fiction:

The first instance of the prototype of a detective appeared most probably in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, where the most important classical detective is Oedipus, the protagonist, whose dual roles as an investigator and subsequently as revealed criminal, exemplify the obliterating boundary between morality and immorality, order and anarchy, with which the subsequent detective fiction managed to capture the reader’s interest. Definitely, Oedipus is the precursor to the modern detective as the way he directs the meticulous investigation to unravel the identity of the perpetrator. Similar conjectures can be made about the character of Daniel in the story of Susanna in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, and mythical larcenist Cacus who features in the work of several writers, including Virgil. Another work of a similar trajectory is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It follows a similar mystery-driven narrative of modern detective fiction. Hamlet initiates an investigation to find out the murderer of his father, but eventually, he becomes directly or indirectly responsible for at least four other deaths in the process. The late Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedies were equally obsessed with horrendous crimes, brutal murders, and the proper punishment of the offender.

Crime related writings in the 18th century:

The Newgate Calendar emerged during the 18th century and immediately caught the attention of the masses with its collection of the lives of those executed in Newgate prison. The prose fiction of the18th century was dominated by sexual violence, highly sensationalized and often coupled with the supernatural element, central to the Gothic novel as well as to some extent some of the greatest romantic poems, for instance, Lord Tennyson’s Maud(1855) and Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1868). The plot of the contemporary prose fiction, comprised child theft, rape, prostitution, and family law.

The true origin of modern detective fiction can be located in the miscellaneous writings of 18th century England. Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) is a classic example of the inclusion of subjects like crime, prostitution, juvenile delinquency, as the eponymous anti-heroine’s gradual descent into the labyrinth of crime and eventual repentance is the story of the novel. Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones fall into the same category. The comparison of these three works and Victorian detective fiction may seem farfetched but criminal misbehavior and dispensation of justice are common features in both of them, though no hint of mystery or any process of detection was involved in it. In the 19th century, during the nascent years of fiction itself, an instinctive selection of the topic by the writers was a particular subject: crime. The founding fathers of the detective fiction in the Victorian era are William Godwin, for Caleb Williams, E.A. Poe for his Dupin series, the famous character, who made his first appearance in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, (1841),Wilkie Collins, for The Moonstone and The Woman in White. Emile Gaboriau, Le Petit Vieux de Batignolles. Fyodor Dostoievski’s Crime and punishment is often argued to be the greatest of all crime fiction.  Edgar Allan Poe's creation, C.Auguste Dupin is the first specimen of the character of the detective, accompanied by his anonymous companion who resembles the archetypal character of Dr. Watson in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Dupin featured in three short stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue,(1841), The Mystery of Mary Roget, (841-43), and The Purloined Letter, (1844).In this ‘tales of ratiocination’, Dupin makes use of his deductive skill to arrive at a solution to the transgressive act. He can be regarded as the forerunner of a legacy that includes Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple, Maigret, Father Brown, Sam Spade John Rebus, et al. Following the publication of Poe’s short stories, a new genre of crime fiction, rather popularized as, ‘ penny dreadful,’ short novellas especially targeted the young urbanized working-class people with ‘a taste of macabre’. An alternative to the ‘penny dreadful’ fiction, a new genre of fiction emerged at the end of the 19th century, popularly known as the Sensation novel. The quintessential sensation novel was Wilkie Collin’s The Woman in white, followed by Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1962). (Richard Bradford, Crime Fiction)

 But, it is undeniable that the true character of a detective in detective fiction came into existence with the creation of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The character first appeared in the novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887). Inspired by Poe’s character Dupin, Sherlock Holmes emerged as the figure of a detective who uses intellectual agility and forensic methods to solve a crime. The Holmes series of short stories attracted an enormous and devoted audience and was later joined by Father Brown, the creation of G.K. Chesterton and also marked the advent of the first Golden era. The first Golden era of detection ended in 1914.

The second Golden era is remarkable for two reasons, the preeminence of three ‘Queens of Crime’, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, and Dorothy. L. Sayers, reinforcing the female presence in crime writing, and the magnificent growth of detective fiction in other countries. The detective fiction of this period belonged to the ‘Whodunnit’ kind, as classified by Tsvetan Todorov, in his ‘The Typology of Detective Fiction.