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| Sherlock Holmes Scoffs at Dupin Excerpt from A Study in Scarlet Dr. Watson says: "You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories." Sherlock Homes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin," he observed. "Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine." As for Houdini's comments on the matter... (there was a certain outburst during one of his shows)
A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: I will tell you one thing; you can't fill a house like Conan Doyle did twice! HOUDINI: Well, all right, if ever I am such a plagiarist as Conan Doyle, who pinched Edgar Allan Poe's plumes, I will fill all houses... A VOICE FROM THE AUDIENCE: Do you call him a thief? HOUDINI: No, but I say that his story Scandal in Bohemia is only the brilliant letter [sic] by Poe... I walked into his room at the Ambassador Hotel [in Atlantic City] and I saw twenty books, French, English and German; a paragraph marked out of each one of the detective stories. I don't say he used them... quoted from Kenneth Silverman's Houdini!!! biography, page 349!
Here is also an old journal reference on the subject:  Poe's Library Back To Usher
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