Is Edgar Allan Poe the "father of the detective novel"?

[Warwick]

I know that he didn't technically wrote detective novels, but rather short stories, but still... do you think that he can be considered the father of detective literature? Could his "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" be the sources that inspired so many authors of detective fiction afterwards?

[bree]

My vote would probably go to Wilkie Collins, not Poe - as The Moonstone is usually considered to be the first English detective novel.

[Hayley]

I think I would say it is fair to call Poe the father of detective fiction, there's quite a lot of similarities between his Dupin stories and some of our best loved detective fiction, like Sherlock Holmes. I do agree with bree though, Collins produced the first real English detective novel, and it's very good