Listen free for 30 days
Listen with offer
-
The Purloined Letter
- Narrated by: Walter Zimmerman, John Chatty
- Length: 26 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
99p for the first 3 months
The Purloined Letter
Buy Now for £1.39
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
Editor reviews
In "The Purloined Letter", Edgar Allan Poe reprises his cunning private investigator C. Auguste Dupin. Among Poe’s most formative contributions to the literary canon, Dupin’s appearance predates English usage of the word "detective" itself, and the character no doubt bore a considerable influence on Arthur Conan Doyle’s eponymous Sherlock Holmes stories. Here Dupin is charged with recovering a stolen letter containing sensitive information. Dupin realizes that in order to crack this case he’ll have to beat the blackmailer at his own game. Performers Walter Zimmerman and John Chatty take turns as the story’s principal characters, serving up snappy, quick-clipped riposte between the pointed Parisians.
Summary
These stories are considered important forerunners of the modern detective story. The method Poe's detective, Dupin, uses to solve the crime was quite innovative. He tried to identify with the criminal and to "think like he would." In May of 1844 Poe wrote to James Russell Lowell that he considered it "perhaps the best of my tales of ratiocination"