BBB Etymology - Whodunit
E.F. Bleiler's introduction to Richmond (1827) is an elaborate look at the earliest English language detective tales, writings from 1790 - 1840, from William Godwin to just before Edgar Allan Poe. In it, Bleiler identifies several main strands of the early detective story: the most common being tales in which circumstantial evidence implicates one person in a crime, but in which someone else is actually the guilty party. Eventually elucidation follows, and with greater or lesser ingenuity, the real villain is finally exposed. This is a good description of Bulwer-Lytton's Pelham (1828) with other features of this tradition: foreshadowings of the crime. building up of motives, detailed descriptions of the murder scene, considerable "sinister" atmosphere, the discovery of the crime and the preliminary investigation, much speculation about the identity of the actual guilty party, and the gathering of clues at the scene.
The early whodunit goes back at least to Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794). In that book, two different people are suspected of the murder of an obnoxious squire. With Poe, we see a fundamentally different approach. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), we have a detective tale in which real, multi-purpose mystery is the centerpiece, in which it is the detective's job to elucidate all of the mysteries surrounding a crime, not just identify the guilty party. Poe's approach here greatly extends the scope of detective fiction.
According to the "OED News" (Oxford English Dictionary), the first recorded use of "whodunit" was by George S. Kaufman in 1925/1930.
The early whodunit goes back at least to Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794). In that book, two different people are suspected of the murder of an obnoxious squire. With Poe, we see a fundamentally different approach. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), we have a detective tale in which real, multi-purpose mystery is the centerpiece, in which it is the detective's job to elucidate all of the mysteries surrounding a crime, not just identify the guilty party. Poe's approach here greatly extends the scope of detective fiction.
According to the "OED News" (Oxford English Dictionary), the first recorded use of "whodunit" was by George S. Kaufman in 1925/1930.
