Two new books revisit Edgar Allan Poe and the origins of Sherlock Holmes

Two new nonfiction books examine the literary legacy of Edgar Allan Poe and the historical figures who inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective fiction.

Emily Ogden, a professor at the University of Virginia, released Darkness Beccomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe. Ogden taught Poe's work before deciding to write a book about him. She describes the project as a study of Poe's followers who have used his writing as a guide into dark subjects such as madness, loneliness, and pain. The book mixes biography with an exploration of how Poe's work affected translators like Charles Baudelaire. Ogden frames the narrative with a diary entry from 1849. It details an incident where Poe visited Philadelphia engraver John Sartain and asked to go to the Fairmount Water Works. Sartain kept Poe from jumping off a platform above the Schuylkill River during that visit.

Lindsay Fitzharris, a medical historian, published Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes. The book focuses on two doctors who studied at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary: surgeon Joseph Bell and forensics expert Henry Duncan Littlejohn. Doyle attended lectures with them as a medical student. He later gave these figures a second life in his novels. Bell, known as the demon of diagnosis, could identify a patient's occupation by reading scars on their hands. Fitzharris details Bell's investigative work with Littlejohn on major Scottish murder cases. She argues they were involved in the Jack the Ripper case. The book also provides brief histories of toxicology, anesthesiology, and public health.

Conan Doyle considered Poe the father of the detective tale. Doyle wrote that Poe covered the limits of the genre so completely that he failed to see how followers could find fresh ground. Despite this view, Doyle attempted to write a mystery story to supplement his medical practice. He published A Study in Scarlet in 1887. Fifty-nine more Sherlock Holmes tales followed. The character and Dr. Watson became so famous that letters from hopeful clients still arrive at 221B Baker Street.

Poe died at age 40 in 1849 under mysterious circumstances. He was born in Boston in 1809 and taken in by the Allan family of Virginia at age 3. His legacy includes essays, poems, and short stories. Doyle's characters have been studied extensively by scholars. Fitzharris and Ogden offer new perspectives on figures whose stories have been told many times before.