Comparison of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie

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Introduction
This seminar paper will be focused on the work of 2 famous detective novel authors Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. First there will be a brief introduction to the history of detective genre and its characteristics.Then the 2 authors will be introduced together with their work concentrated specifically on the 2 characters – Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Christie’s Poirot. Thereafter there will be comparison of these two characters. At the end their methodology and unique behavior will be described and conclusion of this paper will be made
Brief history of detective genre
The first detective stories are dated to the begining of the 19th century where first novels can be seen. The stories of E.A.Poe are considered to be the first of detective genre. No other author was able to write detective story which would achieve international popularity. Then there were Harrison Ainsworth with his immediately successful Rookwood and then in 1837 Charles Dickens with his novel Oliver Twist. But the critics response wasn’t very positive on this new growing style so the whole genre went underground. Dickens was fascinated by crime so he put it in a lot of his novels. (FIDO 2005: 105-106) These authors were the base of the genre but the first who were considered the “Great” authors, such as Arthur C. Doyle, Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, came between 19th and 20th century. At the same time the british murder mystery genre began to form. Then in America “The Hard-Boiled” style caught up in 1920’s. They were short little murder stories and they were very famous because the prohibition, gangster violence and because they were popularized in cheap and available magazines. (pbs.org – A Brief History of the Detective Story)
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FICTIONWRITING. Top 10 Rules for Mystery Writing. [online] Ginny Wienhardt [cit. 2012-12-01] Retrieved from WWW:
< http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/genrefiction/tp/mysteryrules.htm>
SHERLOCKHOLMESONLINE. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Biography. [online] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate [cit. 2012-12-01] Retrieved from WWW: < http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/Biography/index.htm>
NOTABLEBIOGRAPHIES. Agatha Christie Bibliography [online] Advameg, Inc. [cit. 2012-12-01] Retrieved from WWW: < http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ch-Co/Christie-Agatha.html>
BRITANNICA. Detective story [online] Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.[cit. 2012-12-01] Retrieved from WWW: < http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/159456/detective-story>

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