Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most important and influential American writers of the 19th century. He was the first author to try to make a professional living as a writer. Much of Poe's work was inspired by the events that happened around him. Berenice is a short horror story. Egaeus grew up in a mansion with gloomy, solitary temperament and poor health. His favourite place is the library, the place in which he was born and his mother died. There, he wastes his time absorbed in books and in misty memories and meditations. Among his memories was Berenice, his cousin. She grew up with him but she was a cheerful, graceful and lively girl until a strange nervous disease affected her, what terribly changed her temperament and look. She became a pale, gloomy, melancholy girl, with a morbid and awful aspect. Her disease, sometimes, caused in Berenice a false impression of death, which she suddenly woke up. Attracted to this Berenice, Egaeus decided to marry with her. At the same time, Egaeus developed his own illness. He suffered from a type of monomania, or an impulsive and fruitless observation of trivial things what he called the attentive. He explained his monomania isn´t the same common reflection from the dreamers or the speculative, in which the attention in the object is replaced by deductions and meditations about world and life. Enjoy free online English audiobook “Berenice”, a breathtaking novel by Edgar Allan Poe.
