C. Auguste Dupin implies "duping" or deception, a skill Dupin shows off in "The Purloined Letter." Detective fiction, however, had no real precedent and the word "detective" had not yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin. The closest example in fiction is Voltaire's "Zadig" (1748), in which the main character performs similar feats of analysis, themselves borrowed from "The Three Princes of Serendip", an Italian rendition of Amir Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht. In writing the series of Dupin tales, Poe capitalized on contemporary popular interest. His use of an orangutan in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was inspired by the popular reaction
Louis Ellies Dupin Optatus of Mileve (Paris, 1700), the Psalms with annotations (1691), and published "Notes sur le Pentateuque" (1701), an abridgment of "L'histoire de l'Eglise" (1712), "L'histoire profane" (1714–1716), "L'histoire d'Apollonius de Tyane" (1705, under the name of M. de Clairac), a "Traité de la puissance ecclésiastique et temporelle", a commentary on the Four Articles of the clergy of France (1707), the "Bibliothèque universelle des historiens" (1716), numerous works and articles on theology, reprints of former works, etc. Dupin was no pedant. Louis Ellies Dupin Louis Ellies du Pin, or Dupin (17 June 1657 – 6 June 1719) was a French ecclesiastical