13. He Created The First-Ever Literary Detective, C Auguste Dupin
Poe is regarded as the "father of the modern literary detective" after he created Le Chevalier C Auguste Dupin as the protagonist for The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841. This book is widely considered to be the first detective-fiction story, and Poe brought back Dupin for two further works - The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842) and The Purloined Letter (1844). The inspiration behind such celebrated characters as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Dupin was not a professional detective but solved mysteries as a hobby during the three books. Poe terms Dupin's investigative talent as "ratiocination" - rational and exact reasoning - and this work helped to lay the foundations for the modern-day detective genre of literature.