Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories. The first of three of Poe’s tales involving Dupin, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is set in Paris, primarily on the fictional Rue Morgue. One evening, Dupin demonstrates his analytical prowess by deducing the narrator's thoughts about a particular stage actor, based on clues g... Read More
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous stories, The Pit and the Pendulum, a work of horror that achieves its effect through a description of the unnamed narrator’s experiences and internal feelings, was for its time remarkably innovative in its focus on sensations. At the beginning of the story, the narrator is explaining his reaction as he's sentenced to death by the inquisitors. Until that mome... Read More
The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. An unnamed narrator confesses that he has murdered an old man, apparently because of the old man’s ‘Evil Eye’ which drove the narrator to kill him. He then describes how he crept into the old man’s bedroom while he slept and stabbed him, dragging the corpse away and dismembering it, so as to concea... Read More
One of Poe’s most terrifying tales, The Fall of the House of Usher is narrated by a man who has been invited to visit his childhood friend Roderick Usher. The Fall of the House of Usher as a “novel.” However, despite the characteristic brevity of the narrative, the work deserves inclusion here, because it is simply impossible to imagine the modern novel without considering Poe’s masterful writi... Read More
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. While editor of The Broadway Journal, Poe printed a letter from a New York physician named Dr A. Sidney Doane that recounted a surgical operation performed while a patient was "in magnetic sleep." The letter served as inspiration for Poe's tale. Many readers thought that the story was a scientific report.... Read More
The Premature Burial is a horror short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1844 in The Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. The story begins with the narrator bringing up cataclysms like the Lisbon Earthquake and the Plague of London and all of the death and destruction they caused. He starts with this background to emphasize how people are naturally drawn to these horrific events,... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. He and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the myste... Read More
The Masque of the Red Death, originally published as The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy, is an 1842 short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It is a fictional plague sweeping through the land. Prince Prospero, the main character in the short story, is hiding from the plague in an abbey, along with a bunch of other nobles. Despite the plague being quite horrific and consisting of sympto... Read More
A Descent into the Maelström is an 1841 short story by Edgar Allan Poe. In this tale of terror, Poe reveals the macabre nature of the ocean and its unforgiving and enormous power. The narrator's guide shares his feat of escaping a whirlpool that nothing else has ever survived. A Descent into the Maelstrom is a story of fear and terror written by Edgar Allan Poe. In this piece, the narrator and... Read More
As early as the age of thirteen, Edgar Allan Poe had written enough poetry to compile a book. In 1820, he returned to Richmond and got accepted by The University of Virginia. There he found himself attracted towards Latin and poetry. His attachment with the university, however, was short-lived as he had to leave on account of financial issues. In Assignation, an unnamed narrator travels in a go... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe self-published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827. His second poetry collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, was published in 1829. As a critic at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond from 1835 to 1837, Poe published some of his own works in the magazine, including two parts of his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. The Unparalleled... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe was an American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. His tale The Murders in the Rue Morgue initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivalled in American fiction. His The Raven numbers among the best-known poems in the national literature. Poe was the son of the Engl... Read More
Hop-Frog is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1849. The title character, a person with dwarfism taken from his homeland, becomes the jester of a king particularly fond of practical jokes. It is about a king and his 7 advisers who enjoy practical jokes. They have enslaved two dwarfs. One is a male whom they call Hop-Frog and the other is a female who they hav... Read More
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is generally considered the in... Read More
Loss of Breath, also known as Loss of Breath: A Tale Neither In Nor Out of 'Blackwood, is an American tale written by Edgar Allan Poe and signed under the pseudonym "Littleton Barry" when published. Inspired by the rapid scientific developments during the nineteenth century and pre-war period, Poe and other writers commonly expressed their ideas and perspective about the newfound medical cultur... Read More
Metzengerstein: A Tale in Imitation of the German was the first short story by American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe to see print. It was first published in the pages of Philadelphia's Saturday Courier magazine, in 1832. Metzengerstein follows many conventions of Gothic fiction and, to some, exaggerates those conventions. There was a time long ago when some Hungarians believed that the soul... Read More
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt often subtitled A Sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe written in 1842. Although it also focuses on Dupin’s solving of crime primarily from newspaper reports, is actually based on the murder of a young girl, Mary Cecilia Rogers, near New York City. Because the crime had not been solved when Poe wrote the story, he made use of... Read More
Never Bet the Devil Your Head, often subtitled "A Tale with a Moral", is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1841. The satirical tale pokes fun at the notion that all literature should have a moral and spoofs transcendentalism. At the beginning of this tale, the narrator warns his friend, about the consequences of foolish bets. Toby Dammit was a man who was very... Read More
The Oblong Box is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844, about a sea voyage and a mysterious box. The narrator begins with booking passage on a ship to travel from Charleston, S.C. to New York. He soon finds that an artist friend, Mr Cornelius Wyatt, along with Wyatt's wife and two sisters, will be on the same ship. Our narrator reports that there are three rooms booked for... Read More
The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hu... Read More