Journey through the history of mystery with Edgar Allan Poe and Jack London, today on The Classic Tales Podcast. Welcome to The Classic Tales Podcast. Thank you for listening. This episode of The Classic Tales Podcast is made possible by its listeners. With much heartfelt gratitude, we thank those who have gone to www.thebestaudiobooks.com and become financial supporters. We couldn’t do this without you. The Enchiridion for the month of September is the second of four installments of Jules Verne’s classic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Supporting members get access to the monthly Enchiridion and an $8 credit for anything in the store. It only costs $5 a month to become a supporting member. Your monthly support really helps us keep this running, and it really is a great value. Thank you for your support. Today, we’re going to take a bit of a journey. Edgar Allan Poe is widely acknowledged as being the one who invented the armchair detective/mystery genre. The Gold Bug, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and today’s story of The Purloined Letter are among his great achievements in creating a genre which others went on to perfect. Though The Purloined Letter isn’t the first of his mystery creations, you can still see how Poe is still feeling out how to explain how he arrived at his conclusions. It’s not perfect. But it’s an interesting window into the mind of how the mystery genre was created. The Purloined Letter was first published in 1844. Nearly 60 years later, in 1903, Jack London wrote our second tale, The Leopard Man’s Story. Notice how far the genre has come. London had the likes of Doyle, Chesterton, Collins and many others to learn from. But the way he introduces his story, cultivates it, and delivers the solution to the mystery is nothing short of elegant. I hope you enjoy this journey through the history of mystery.