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The Essays, Sketches and Lectures of Edgar Allan Poe

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Sections: The Collections and Books The Essays, etc. Related Material Bibliography

The Collections and Books:

Editions Authorized by Poe:

Poe published only one of his lectures during his life. This was “The Universe,” published as Eureka , the “Prose Poem” by which he hoped most ernestly to be remembered. Other items were first collected in the posthumous collection edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, incorporating some additional manuscript changes and other material. These collections are listed chronologically.

Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848 — EUREKA — there are several copies with annotations by Poe)
The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe , edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold (1850, volume II: Poems and Miscellanies ; and 1856, volume IV: Pym, &c . — WORKS )

Later Collected Editions:

After Griswold's death in 1857, there were several alternate attempts to collect Poe's works, including a number of the essays and Eureka . The most important of these were collections edited by John H. Ingram, also in four volumes (initially published in 1874-1875), the ten-volume set edited by Edmund C. Stedman and George E. Woodberry (initially published in 1894-1895), and the seventeen-volume set edited by James A. Harrison (published in 1902). (Although at least one of these editions bears the title of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe , none of them are, in fact, actually complete. In some instances, they also contain works that have since been identified as not being by Poe.)

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe , edited by John H. Ingram (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1874-1875 — The essays are collected in volume 3)
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe , edited by Edmund C. Stedman and George E. Woodberry (Chicago: Stone and Kimball, 1894-1895 — The essays are collected in volume 7 and Eureka will be found in volume 9)
The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe , edited by James A. Harrison (New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1902 — The essays are collected in volume 14 and Eureka will be found in volume 16)

Modern Scholarly Editions:

The most widely recognized scholarly edition of Poe's tales and sketches, also including some of the essays, are the volumes edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, (published in 1978, nearly a decade after Mabbott's death), completed by his widow, Maureen Cobb Mabbott (and several assistants), with a few additional essays appearing in the volumes in the edition as continued by Burton R. Pollin. All of these volumes are thoroughly annotated, with introductory material, notes and variants. Two volumes originally prepared for this series, edited by Stuart and Susan Levine, were published separately by the University of Illinois Press.

The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe , edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978 — Volume 2: Tales and Sketches, 1831-1842 and Volume 3: Tales and Sketches, 1843-1849 )
The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe , edited by Burton R. Pollin (New York: Gordian Press, 1986 and 1997 — Volume 3: Writings in the Broadway Journal, Text , Volume 4: Writings in the Broadway Journal, Annotations , and Volume 35 Writings in the Southern Literary Messenger, Text and Annotations
Eureka and Edgar Allan Poe: Critical Theory , edited by Stuart and Susan F. Levine (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004 and 2009)

The Essays, Sketches and Lectures:

These items are arranged alphabetically by name. Within each name, entries are listed chronologically. Some of these items were not published under any specific title and most are, therefore, given here under a title deemed appropriately descriptive. The authorship of some items is a topic long researched and debated. Most of the items included here were signed, but for some, the attribution to Poe is necessarily the result of conjecture. A few prominent items that have been rejected are also listed, including a number of poems that were erroneously ascribed to Poe by T. O. Mabbott.

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

“ American Novel-Writing ”
“ American Poetry ”
“ American Poetry ” (a lecture)
“ Anastatic Printing ”
“ Byron and Miss Chaworth ”
“ The Capitol at Washington ” (rejected)
“ A Chapter in the History of Vivum-Ovo ” (rejected)
“ Cryptography ” (alternate title for “Secret Writing”)
“ The Elk ” (later title of “Morning on the Wissahiccon”)
“ English Notes for Extensive Circulation ” (rejected)
“ Eureka ”
“ Exordium [to Critical Notices] ”
“ A Few Words on Etiquette ” (rejected)
“ Harpers Ferry ” (rejected)
“ House Furniture ” (alternate title for “The Philosophy of Furniture”)
“ Instinct Versus Reason — A Black Cat ”
“ Letter to B—— ”
“ Maelzel's Chess-Player ”
“ Magazine Writing — Peter Snook ” (alternate title of a review of “Peter Snook,” by James Dalton
“ Morning on the Wissahiccon ” (original title of “The Elk”)
“ Notes Upon English Verse ” (original title for “The Rationale of Verse”)
“ An Opinion on Dreams ” (rejected)
“ Our Magazine Literature ” (Possibly by Poe, but disputed)
“ Old English Poetry ” (Actually a later title assigned to Poe's review of Book of Gems by Samuel Carter Hall)
“ Palaestine ”
“ The Pay for American Authors ”
The Philosophy of Animal Magnetism (rejected)
“ The Philosophy of Composition ”
“ The Philosophy of Furniture ”
“ The Poetic Principle ”
“ Poets and Poetry of America ” (a lecture, also called “American Poetry”)
“ The Rationale of Verse ”
“ Secret Writing ”
“ Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House ”
“ Some Account of Stonehenge ”
“ Street-Paving ”

Related Material:

A chronological index (in preparation)
“ The Canon of Poe's Essays, Sketches & Lectures

Bibliography:

Brigham, Clarence S., Edgar Allan Poe's Contributions to Alexander's Weekly Messenger , Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society , April 1943. (Also reprinted separately.)
Edsall, Thomas, ed., The Poe Catalogue , Baltimore: The 19th Century Shop, 1992. (This catalogue includes a few reprints of material which are not noted elsewhere.)
Harrison, James A[lbert]., ed, The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe , 17 vols, New York: T. Crowell, 1902.
Heartman, Charles F. and James R. Canny, A Bilbiography of First Printings of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe , Hattiesburg, MS: The Book Farm, 1943. (The best overall bibliography of Poe, although it does contain errors and is somewhat outdated.)
Levine, Stuart and Susan F., eds., Eureka , Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004 (Poe's text, edited and with an introduction, notes and textual variants)
Levine, Stuart and Susan F., eds., Edgar Allan Poe: Critical Theory , Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009 (Poe's texts, edited and with introductory material, notes and textual variants)
Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe ; (Vols 2-3 Tales and Sketches ), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978. (Second printing 1979)
Pollin, Burton R., ed., The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe ; Vols. III & IV - The Broadway Journal: Non-Fictional Prose , New York: Gordian Press, 1986; Vol. V - The Southern Literary Messenger: Non-Fictional Prose , New York: Gordian Press, 1997.
Thompson, G. Richard, ed. , Essays and Reviews , New York: The Library of America, 1984. (A good basic collection.)
Vines, Lois D., ed., Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities , Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999. (An extremely useful compendium of articles by various authors, divided by country or region.)
Woodberry, George E[dward]. and Stedman, Edmund Clarence, The Works of Edgar Allan Poe , 10 vols, Chicago, 1894-1895. (Reprinted in 1903 and 1914.)

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Article contents

Poe, edgar allan.

Thomas Wright
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.612
Published online: 26 September 2017

At the beginning of the twenty-first century , Edgar Allan Poe was more popular than ever. The Raven and a number of his Gothic and detective tales were among the most famous writings in the English language, and they were often some of the first works of literature that young adults read. They had also entered the popular imagination—football teams and beers were named after them, and they had inspired episodes of the animated television show The Simpsons and a number of rock songs. Poe also continued to exercise a profound influence over writers and artists. Two of the most popular authors of the second half of the twentieth century , Stephen King and Isaac Asimov , acknowledged Poe as an important precursor. Countless novels published at the end of the twentieth century , such as Peter Ackroyd 's The Plato Papers: A Prophesy ( 1999 ) and Mark Z. Danielewski 's House of Leaves ( 2000 ), also bear definite traces of his influence. The Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges , whose own works are greatly indebted to Poe, once called him the unacknowledged father of twentieth-century literature, and Poe's influence shows no signs of diminishing. Despite his enormous popularity and influence, Poe's canonical status is still challenged by certain commentators. Harold Bloom , for instance, regards Poe's writings as vulgar and stylistically flawed. Bloom follows in a long line of Poe detractors, many of whom have been amazed by the fact that what T. S. Eliot called his “puerile” and “haphazard” productions could have influenced “great” writers such as the French poets Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé .

Poe criticism was, however, far more favorable (and far more plentiful) over the last half of the twentieth century than previously. Poe is indeed something of a boom industry in academia. New Critics, New Historicists, psychoanalysts, and poststructuralists all find his works suggestive. Few of these critics are interested in making aesthetic judgements, however, and those who concern themselves with such things continue to express doubts about Poe's achievement.

As a result, Poe remains something of an enigma. To many he is a formative influence, a genius, and an inspiration; to others he is a shoddy stylist and a charlatan. It would be more reasonable, perhaps, to regard Poe as all of these things and to accept James Russell Lowell 's famous judgment that he was “Three fifths…genius, and two fifths sheer fudge.” Few of Poe's readers are reasonable, however, as he is one of those writers who is either loved or hated.

Poe's Persona

One of the reasons Poe has been far more popular and influential than writers who, according to some, have produced works of greater literary value is that he created, with a little help from others, a fascinating literary persona. That persona was of an author at once bohemian and extremely intellectual. The bohemian aspect was largely the creation of his “friend” Rufus Wilmot Griswold , who in his obituary of Poe described him as a depraved and demonic writer. Poe himself was responsible for the intellectual element: he presented himself to the public in his writings as an erudite and bookish scholar.

Poe's persona captured the imagination of the world; like Byron before him, he became a kind of mythical or archetypal figure. Nineteenth-century poets such as Ernest Dowson and Baudelaire (who prayed to Poe and dressed up as him) regarded Poe as the original bohemian poète maudit (a tradition in which the poet explores extremes of experience and emotional depth) and as the first self-conscious literary artist. As such, he seemed to be a prefiguring type of themselves. This legendary persona may be at odds with Poe's real personality and the actual facts of his biography, but that is beside the point. What matters is that it fascinated and continues to fascinate people.

Poe's legendary personality and life have also provided people with a context in which his writings can be read (and it is worth noting here that an account of Poe's life has traditionally appeared as a preface to anthologies of his works). As is the case with the Irish writer Oscar Wilde , we tend to read Poe's works as expressions of his (real or mythical) character and as dramatizations of his personality. This confers a degree of homogeneity on his writings; although he experimented in a variety of forms and wrote on numberless topics, we think of all of his productions as “Poe performances.”

Early Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on 19 January 1809 , the son of the itinerant actors David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold , both of whom died when he was still an infant. He was brought up by the Richmond tobacco merchant John Allan , with whom he had a difficult relationship. Educated in London and then, for a brief period, at the University of Virginia, Poe entered the U.S. Army in 1827 . It was always Poe's ambition to be recognized as a great poet, and in 1827 he published his first volume of verse, Tamerlane and Other Poems , under the name “a Bostonian.”

The title poem of the slim collection is a monologue by Tamerlane, the Renaissance Turkish warrior. The other poems are conventional romantic meditations on death, solitude, nature, dreams, and vanished youth in which Poe comes before us, as it were, in the theatrical garb of the romantic poet. The poems display Poe's considerable gift for imitation (which he later used to great effect in his prose parodies) and his habit of half quoting from his favorite authors. They contain countless echoes from romantic poets (especially Lord Byron). It is not, however, so much a question of plagiarism as it is of Poe serving a literary apprenticeship and placing himself within a poetic tradition.

In 1829 Poe published, under his own name, his second verse collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems . It contained revised versions of some of the poems that had been published in Tamerlane (Poe was a zealous reviser) and seven new poems. Sonnet—To Science , Poe's famous poem on the antagonistic relationship between science and poetry, opens the book. It is followed by the title poem, Al Aaraaf , which has been variously interpreted as a lament for the demise of the creative imagination in a materialistic world and as an allegorical representation of Poe's aesthetic theories. The poem is characterized by its variety of meter, its heavy baroque effects, and its extreme obscurity. The volume has its lighter moments, however. Fairyland , with its “Dim vales,” “Huge moons,” and yellow albatrosses is one of Poe's first exercises in burlesque and self-parody. It was typical of Poe to include, within the same volume, serious poems and comic pieces that seem to parody those compositions.

In 1831 , wishing to leave the army, Poe got himself expelled from the West Point military academy. In that year he also brought out a third volume of poetry, Poems by Edgar A. Poe . This collection represents a considerable advance on his earlier efforts and contains famous poems such as To Helen and The Doomed City (later called The City in the Sea ). The former, which is perhaps the most beautiful of all Poe's lyrics, is a stately hymn to Helen of Troy, which in its later, revised form, contained the celebrated lines:

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the Glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

The Doomed City is a wonderful evocation of a silent city beneath the sea.

Both poems create a haunting atmosphere through the use of alliteration, assonance, measured rhythms, and gentle rhymes; they also contain words with long open vowel sounds such as “loom,” “gloom,” “yore,” and “bore” that were to become a Poe trademark. Because of Poe's fondness for such techniques, it is hardly surprising that his poems have been compared to music. Poe believed that music was the art that most effectively excited, elevated, and intoxicated the soul and thus gave human beings access to the ethereal realm of supernal beauty, a realm in which Poe passionately believed and for which he seems to have pined throughout his life. As Poe aimed to create similar effects with his verse, he attempted to marry poetry and music. This is why the rhythm of his verse is perfectly measured and often incantatory; it is also why he frequently chose words for their sounds rather than for their sense. In To Helen , for example, he writes of “those Nicéan barks of yore,” a rather confused classical allusion but a word that produces wonderfully musical vibrations.

Poe offers us what he called “a suggestive indefiniteness of meaning with a view of bringing about vague and therefore spiritual effects .” Decadent and symbolist poets of the nineteenth century , including Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine , were heavily influenced by Poe's method, and they consciously imitated his “word-music.” They also regarded Poe as their most important precursor because of his theoretical statements about poetry. Indeed, Poe was (and perhaps remains) as famous a critic and theoretician of verse as he was a poet. He is particularly remembered for his powerful denunciation of didactic poetry and for his emphasis on the self-consciousness and deliberateness of the poet's art.

Most of Poe's important theoretical pronouncements were made in the essays and lectures he wrote toward the end of his life. In Poems he wrote a prefatory “Letter to Mr —,” which represents his first theoretical statement about verse. Here he defined poetry as a pleasurable idea set to music. He also argued, with more than a slight nod to the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge , that poetry “is opposed to a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having for its object an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure.” At its best, Poe's poetry embodies such ideas by creating vague yet powerful atmospheric effects and by giving the reader intense aesthetic pleasure.

Poe's early poetry received mixed reviews and failed to establish him as either a popular or a critically acclaimed author. Later commentators, such as T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman , criticized its limited range and extent; they also bemoaned its lack of intellectual and moral content. Others dismissed Poe as a mere verse technician; Emerson famously referred to him as “the jingle man.” Poe's verse was, however, revered by later nineteenth-century poets such as Mallarmé and Dowson, and considering his influence on such Decadent and symbolist writers, he can perhaps be regarded as the most influential American poet of that century after Whitman.

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

Numerous connections exist between Poe's early verse and the short stories he started to write for magazines and newspapers around 1830 . (Poe's decision to turn his hand to prose was partly because of the lack of commercial and critical success achieved by his poetry.) In some of his stories Poe included poems; he also returned to forms, such as the dramatic monologue and the dialogue between disembodied spirits, that he had used in poems such as Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf . And yet Poe's tales are clearly distinguished from his early verse, most obviously by their variety of mood, content, and theme. Poe seems to have been liberated as a writer when he turned from romantic verse to the more flexible, capacious, and traditionally heterogeneous genre of the short story. He now had at his disposal a multitude of tones and devices, and in the twenty-five stories that he wrote in the 1830s and that were collected in the anthology Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (2 vols., 1840 ), he exploited these to great effect.

In fact, such is the diversity of the style and mood of Poe's early stories that the division of the contents of Tales into the two categories of grotesque and arabesque seems simplistic and inadequate. Poe's grotesques are comic and burlesque stories that usually involve exaggeration and caricature. In this group we can include the tales Lionizing and The Scythe of Time (earlier called A Predicament ), which are satires of the contemporary literary scene. Another characteristic of Poe's grotesque stories is the introduction of elements of the ludicrous and the absurd. In the tale Loss of Breath , the protagonist literally loses his breath and goes out in search of it. It is a shame that Poe's early grotesques are generally neglected, because not only do they testify to his range and resourcefulness as a writer, but some of them are compelling and funny. The neglect results partly from the fact that, in order to be appreciated, they require extensive knowledge of the literary and political state of antebellum America and partly because they have been overshadowed by his arabesque tales.

Poe's arabesque tales are intricately and elaborately constructed prose poems. The word “arabesque” can also be applied to those stories in which Poe employed Gothic techniques. Gothic literature, which typically aimed to produce effects of mystery and horror, was established in the latter half of the eighteenth century by writers such as the English novelist Anne Radcliffe and the German story writer E. T. A. Hoffmann . By the beginning of the nineteenth century , the Gothic short story had become one of the most popular forms of magazine literature in England and America.

It is generally agreed that Poe's particular contribution to Gothic literature was his use of the genre to explore and describe the psychology of humans under extreme and abnormal conditions. Typically, his characters are at the mercy of powers over which they have no control and which their reason cannot fully comprehend. These powers may take the form of sudden, irrational impulses (“the imp of the perverse” that inspires the protagonist of Berenice to extract the teeth of his buried wife, for example), or as is the case with the eponymous hero of William Wilson , a hereditary disease. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque contains some of Poe's most famous Gothic productions, including Morella , Ligeia , and Berenice (the stories of the so-called “marriage group,” which concern the deaths of beautiful young women), along with perhaps the most popular of all his tales, The Fall of the House of Usher .

“Usher” is a characteristic arabesque production. It exhibits many of the trappings of Gothic fiction: a decaying mansion located in a gloomy setting, a protagonist (Roderick Usher) who suffers from madness and a peculiar sensitivity of temperament inherited from his ancient family, and a woman (his sister) who is prematurely buried and who rises from her tomb. Yet from Gothic clichés such as these, Poe produced a tale of extraordinary power. Indeed, perhaps only Stephen King in The Shining ( 1977 ) has succeeded in investing a building with such horror and in conveying the impression that it is alive.

Apart from the grotesque and arabesque stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque includes other varieties of writing. Hans Phaall has been classed as science fiction, and King Pest is a surreal historical adventure. Several stories contain elements of all of these genres; Metzengerstein , for example, is at once a work of historical fiction, a powerful Gothic tale, and a witty and grotesque parody of the latter genre. The diversity of the contents of the tales, and the variety of theme and style within individual stories, must be seen in the context of the original form in which they appeared. All of the tales were first published in popular newspapers and magazines from 1832 to 1839 . The audience for such publications was extremely heterogeneous, and Poe was clearly trying to appeal to as large a cross-section as possible. We should also remember that, unlike subscribers to weightier publications, the magazine- and newspaper-reading public had a very limited attention span. Readers craved novelty, sensation, and diversity.

Poe was profoundly influenced by the tastes of this public. In a letter to Thomas Willis White , a newspaper editor, he remarked that the public loves “the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful colored into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.” In Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque this is precisely what he gave them. The most obvious characteristic of his stories is their sensationalism: they include accounts of balloon journeys to the moon, premature burials, encounters with the devil, and a number of gruesome deaths.

From the early 1830s Poe planned to gather together his short stories and publish them in book form. In the mid-1830s he unsuccessfully offered for publication a collection of stories under the title Tales of the Folio Club . Poe devised an elaborate plan for the “Folio Club” volume. The tales were to be read out, over the course of a single evening, by various members of a literary club, and each story was to be followed by the critical remarks of the rest of the company. The book was evidently intended as a satire of popular contemporary modes of fiction and criticism; as such it can be compared to the work of Poe's English contemporary, Thomas Love Peacock . The satirical intent is clearly indicated by the names and descriptions of the various club members, which include “Mr Snap, the President, who is a very lank man with a hawk nose.” Many of the figures were based on real people.

When considering Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , it is important to remember the dramatic nature of its forerunner. Our knowledge of the Folio Club gathering encourages us to read Poe's stories as the compositions of various personae and to regard Poe as author of the authors of the tales. W. H. Auden described Poe's writing as operatic, and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque does indeed resemble an opera in which Poe's narrators walk on and off the stage. Thus, the narrator of Morella mutters, melodramatically, “Years—years, may pass away, but the memory of that epoch—never!” as he leaves the stage to make way for the narrator of Lionizing . “I am,” the latter remarks to the reader-audience by way of introduction, “that is to say, I was —a great man.”

Poe's gift for impersonating his narrators is remarkable, and like a great dramatist, he seemed to contain multitudes of characters. The comparison with the playwright is appropriate because the world of Poe's writing is a thoroughly theatrical one. In it the laws of “real life” (of psychological accuracy and consistency, for instance) do not apply, and in this context we can recall Poe's famous distinction between “Hamlet the dramatis persona” and “Hamlet the man.” In the Poe universe, bizarre and absurd incidents occur on a regular basis, the dialogue and the settings are distinctly stagy, and everything is hyperbolic. As the above quotations from Morella and Lionizing suggest, it is also a world in which tragedy can be quickly followed by comedy.

And here we might recall that Poe was the son of two itinerant actors. It is particularly interesting to note that Poe's beloved mother, Eliza, was renowned for her ability to play an enormous range of tragic and comic roles, often in the same theatrical season. Her son seems to have inherited this gift as, in his writings, he effortlessly swaps a suit of sables for motley attire. At times, as in The Visionary (later called The Assignation ), which contains elements of tragedy, parody, and self-parody, Poe wore both costumes at the same time. And this in turn may help us understand the appeal of Gothic literature for Poe, because it is a form of writing in which comedy intensifies the horror by setting it in relief. Those who have adapted Poe's tales for the cinema have appreciated the humorous elements of the Gothic, as their films are at once terrifying and hilarious.

Drama and theatricality are in fact everywhere in Poe's writing. As a young poet, he effortlessly mimicked the styles of writers such as Byron; as a reviewer he convincingly adopted the tone of the authoritative critic. Throughout his works he seems to entertain and juggle ideas rather than to offer them as articles of faith, and the idea of literary performance is central to his authorship. Poe is a writer-performer whose productions can be compared to virtuoso literary displays. As readers we are like members of a theater audience who are by turns enthralled, horrified, and dazzled, and when the performance is over we applaud Poe's artistry.

An appreciation of the theatrical nature of Poe's work has important consequences for criticism. If we view Poe's writing as fundamentally dramatic, it becomes impossible to discover Poe's individual voice in the universe of voices that is his work or to analyze it from the point of view of his authorial intentions. It also becomes essential to judge the work's style and content in terms of its dramatic appropriateness: when Poe's writing is weak and verbose, for example, this may be the appropriate style for a particular narrator.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The only full-length novel that Poe would write, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket ( 1838 ), was begun on the suggestion of a publisher to whom he had unsuccessfully offered Tales of the Folio Club . Its first two installments appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger , and it came out in book form in 1838 . In choosing to write a sensational sea adventure—the plot includes, among other things, a mutiny, a shipwreck, a famine, and a massacre—Poe once again selected an extremely popular subject and form.

As a realistic chronicle of an utterly fantastic journey, the novel is similar to some of the stories Poe had written in the 1830s, such as MS. Found in a Bottle . Cast in the form of a first-person account of a real sea voyage and including journal entries, “factual” information, and scholarly footnotes, Pym is written with a sharp attention to significant detail that recalls the novels of the eighteenth-century author Daniel Defoe . This attention to detail, which can be found throughout Poe's fiction, confers a degree of verisimilitude on narrations that lack psychological realism. Poe's fictional works are not, in other words, realistic, but they have a reality of their own. Pym is also similar to a Defoe novel in that it is digressive and loosely structured. In contrast to Poe's short stories, it lacks a definite architecture and fails to create a unified impression or effect. Curiously enough, this is precisely what makes it such a hypnotic book. Pym's journey, like that of Karl Rossman in Franz Kafka 's Amerika ( 1927 ), is imbued with a vague sense of horror.

Pym also contains a preface, reminiscent of Defoe, in which the narrator claims that the book is a real account of a voyage although its first installments in the Southern Literary Messenger had appeared under the name of the short-story writer, “Mr Poe.” Few reviewers were taken in by this typical Poe hoax, and the novel was generally reviewed with varying degrees of enthusiasm, as a work of fiction. Until around the 1960s, critics tended to agree with Poe's own dismissive estimation of his “very silly” novel. Since then, however, it has received much better press and has inspired a variety of readings that range from the autobiographical to the allegorical. Like many of Poe's works, it is Pym 's ambiguity and indefiniteness that make it so suggestive. These qualities are perfectly embodied in the novel's famous last line. As the eponymous hero's boat heads toward a cataract, a shrouded human figure suddenly appears, “And the hue of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.” At about the same time Poe also wrote two other works, both unfinished, that can be briefly mentioned here. The Journal of Julius Rodman , a Pym -like account of an expedition across the Rocky Mountains, appeared in Gentleman's Magazine in 1840 . Five years previously the Southern Literary Messenger had published scenes from Politian , a blank verse tragedy set in Renaissance Italy that would later be included in The Raven and Other Poems ( 1845 ).

Poe's Criticism

Throughout his life Poe wrote a great deal of literary journalism and worked in an editorial capacity for a variety of newspapers. It was also one of his great ambitions to edit his own magazine. As a critic he was outspoken, vitriolic, and fearless. He highlighted the technical limitations of the books he reviewed, accused several authors (most famously Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ) of plagiarism, and took great delight in attacking the New England literary establishment.

Poe was not simply motivated by a disinterested concern for the health of letters; he was also desperately trying to carve his way to literary fame. That is why his criticism tended to be as sensational as his short-story writing: controversy was the equivalent of the Gothic and grotesque effects of his fiction. Without money or regular employment, Poe had to achieve celebrity status in order to survive in the literary marketplace, and if he could not be famous then he would be notorious. He did everything he could to keep his name before the public, even going to the extent of anonymously reviewing his own works.

Poe also used the pages of the popular press to fashion and present an image of himself as a man of immense erudition. In his articles, as in his short stories, he included countless quotations and phrases from various languages; he also made a great exhibition of his learning. Poe's “Marginalia,” published in newspapers during the 1840s, consists of comments and meditations that he claimed to have scribbled in the margins of the books in his library. “I sought relief,” he commented, like a latter-day Renaissance connoisseur of fine literature, “from ennui in dipping here and there at random among the volumes of my library.” The reality was quite different, however. Poe wrote the pieces as fillers for newspapers when they were short of copy, and the sad fact of the matter was that he could never afford to assemble an extensive library of his own.

Poe's most important contributions to literary criticism were his theories concerning the short story and poetry. It has been suggested that his comments on the short story, which were scattered throughout reviews of books such as Nathaniel Hawthorne 's Twice-Told Tales ( 1837 ), helped establish the genre in its modern form. Poe's theory can be briefly summarized. He was concerned above all with the effect of his tale on the reader. This effect should, he thought, be single and unified. When readers finished the story they ought be left with a totality of impression, and every element of the story—character, style, tone, plot, and so on—should contribute to that impression. Stories too long to be read at a single sitting could not, in Poe's view, achieve such powerful and unified effects—hence the brevity of his own productions. Poe also advocated the Aristotelian unities of place, time, and action and put special emphasis on the opening and conclusion of his tales. In addition, he encouraged authors to concentrate exclusively on powerful emotional and aesthetic effects—the aim of fiction, he suggested, was not a didactic one. Finally, instead of providing the reader with a transparent upper current of meaning, he thought that the meaning of a tale should be indefinite and ambiguous.

Obviously, such ideas help us understand Poe's own short stories. The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque of the Red Death , for example, exhibit most of the above-mentioned characteristics. The theories of poetry that Poe adumbrated in book reviews and in lectures such as The Poetic Principle ( 1849 ) also help us understand his verse. In Poe's criticism there is a sense in which he was justifying his own practice as a creative writer and also attempting to create the kind of critical atmosphere in which his work would be favorably judged. Other writers, such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound , have also found this to be an effective strategy for achieving literary success. More broadly, it can be suggested that writing such as Poe's that lacks a definite content and an unambiguous message requires a theory in order to, as it were, support it and make it intelligible to the reader.

Poe's statements about poetry are similar to his pronouncements on the short story. Thus, in a review of Longfellow's Hyperion, A Romance ( 1839 ), he criticized its lack of a definite design and unified effect. Later, when commenting on the same author's Ballads and Other Poems ( 1841 ), he complained of Longfellow's didacticism and his failure to appreciate that the aim of poetry was not to instruct readers but to give them access to the world of supernal beauty. These ideas were expressed in a more theoretical form in The Poetic Principle , in which Poe criticized what he referred to as “the heresy of the didactic” and famously defined poetry as “the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.” These ideas proved to be extremely influential and were later adapted by “art-for-art's-sake” aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde and by symbolists such as Paul Valéry . It has also been suggested that Poe's emphasis on the words on the page, rather than on external considerations such as the writer's biography, make him an important precursor of the New Critics.

The Raven and Other Poems

Poe's most influential theoretical essay was probably “The Philosophy of Composition,” published in Graham's Magazine in 1846 . Before we turn to it, however, it is necessary to consider The Raven , the inception and writing of which the essay describes. The Raven , first published in the New York Evening Mirror in January 1845 , was an instant hit with the reading public. This allusion to pop music is apt because the immediate and enormous success of the poem has been accurately compared to that of a present-day song. On its publication, Poe became an overnight sensation, and thereafter he would always be associated with the poem. In a sense this association is unfortunate, because it obscures the fact that the poem, like many of Poe's short stories, is a dramatic production. The narrator, a young man mourning the death of his love Lenore, sits in his study musing “over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore”—a character and a setting typical of Poe. As well as being a dramatic poem, it is also an intensely theatrical one: the gloomy weather, the speaking bird, and props such as the purple curtain and the bust of Pallas could have been filched from the set of a Gothic drama. The young man's language, too, is distinctly stagy; at one point he remarks to the Raven: “ ‘Sir…or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore.’ ” The effect of such distinctly camp lines is complicated; you are not sure whether to laugh or scream. In the theater, and in the theatrical world of the poem, it is of course possible to do both.

Given the theatricality of the poem, it is fitting that Poe performed it, just as Dickens performed his novels, in public and private readings. During his recitations Poe once again proved that the theater was in his blood: he would dress in black, turn the lamps down low, and chant the poem in a melodious voice. The content of the poem is of course unrealistic; like a great drama, however, it creates its own vivid and convincing reality through its solemn rhymes and its stately rhythm.

Poe's raven has become as famous as those other birds of romanticism, Keats 's nightingale, Shelley 's skylark, and Coleridge's albatross. This is ironic because, in The Philosophy of Composition , he insisted that the poem was not a romantic one. The essay was written to demonstrate that, far from being a work of inspiration, the composition of The Raven proceeded with what he called “the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.” Along with metaphors drawn from mathematics, Poe typically (and revealingly) used images of acting to convey his detachment and self-consciousness during the writing of the poem.

Desiring to create a powerful effect of melancholy beauty that would appeal to both “the popular and the critical taste,” Poe tells us that he hit upon the saddest of all subjects: the death of a beautiful woman. This had, of course, been the subject of several of his earlier writings, such as the “marriage group” of stories in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque . In order to make the effect of the poem intense and unified, he decided that it should be limited to around one hundred lines and that it would include a refrain composed of the single, sonorous word, Nevermore . In the remainder of the essay Poe, who might be compared here to a magician who enjoys explaining away his tricks, goes on to make numerous comments of a similar nature.

It has been suggested that The Philosophy of Composition was a typical Poe hoax, and it is highly unlikely that it is a veracious account of the actual writing of The Raven . This, however, is largely irrelevant since the essay's importance lies in the fact that it offered a novel theory of composition and a new conception of the poet. Poe was attempting to replace the idea of the inspired poet that had been established by the ancients and by contemporaries such as Coleridge with his notion of the cold and calculating author. Once again, Poe's idea proved to be extremely influential in the history of literature. It informs Valéry's conception of the poet as an extremely self-conscious artist and T. S. Eliot's idea of the impersonal author.

It is doubtful that Poe's theories would have exercised such a powerful influence had he not also embodied and dramatized them in his writings. Perhaps even more important, he also offered himself as an archetype of the kind of author he was describing. Poe presented himself, in other words, as the exemplar of the self-conscious poet, an original that poets such as Baudelaire copied.

The Raven was republished in Poe's most substantial and famous collection of verse, The Raven and Other Poems , in 1845 . The book, which was prefaced by a statement that typically succeeded in being at once self-effacing and arrogant, contained revised versions of earlier compositions such as Israfel and poems that had never previously appeared in book form. Also included in the collection were several poems that had appeared, or would later appear, in Poe's short stories. (This is a striking demonstration of the homogeneous nature of Poe's oeuvre.) The most famous of these poems are The Haunted Palace , a powerful atmospheric poem improvised by Roderick Usher, and The Conqueror Worm , written by the eponymous hero of Ligeia . In the latter, angels are in a theater watching humankind play out its meaningless “motley drama” in which there is “much of Madness and more of Sin / And horror the soul of the plot.” Suddenly, “a blood-red thing” comes onto the stage. The lights go out, the curtain comes down, and death (for it is he) holds illimitable dominion over all. In its Gothic style, its dark vision of the world, and its theatricality, the poem is characteristic of its author and indeed reads like a microcosm of his oeuvre. One obvious point that can be made in connection with the poems that appeared in Poe's short stories is that they are dramatic works (a comparison here might be made with Robert Browning's monologues). Yet again, Poe displays his great gifts as a mimic or actor, and once more we are alerted to the difficulties of reading his work in an autobiographical light.

Many of Poe's finest poems were written after the publication of The Raven and were collected in volume form posthumously. These include the onomatopoeic The Bells , the beautiful ballad Annabel Lee , and the musical masterpiece Ulalume . This last poem is perhaps the most perfect example of Poe's ability to create a mysterious and unearthly atmosphere through repetition, assonance, and the use of languorous, usually trisyllabic, words. While discussing the poem, Poe is reported to have remarked that he deliberately wrote verse that would be unintelligible to the many. Ulalume is certainly hard to understand, but like the rest of Poe's verse, its ambiguity heightens rather than diminishes its power.

Poe, the Detective Story, and Science Fiction

Between the publication of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840 and his death in 1849 , Poe wrote numerous short stories. Among them are some of the most famous of all his writings, such as The Black Cat , The Tell-Tale Heart , The Cask of Amontillado , The Pit and the Pendulum , Hop-Frog , and The Masque of the Red Death . These stories have achieved the status of myths in the Western world; even those who have not read them know their plots. Because of the exigencies of space, and also because some of Poe's arabesque and grotesque productions have already been discussed, the focus here is on the stories that appeared in Tales ( 1845 ) and, in particular, on Poe's detective tales and science fiction. Although reviewers of Tales were, as usual, divided between those who described Poe as a great original and those who dismissed him as a showy and stylistically incompetent writer, the volume sold better than any of Poe's other publications.

Four detective stories (or “Tales of ratiocination,” as Poe called them) appeared in Tales : the prize-winning The Gold-Bug and three tales that featured the detective C. Auguste Dupin: The Purloined Letter , The Mystery of Marie Roget , and The Murders in the Rue Morgue . Although writers such as Voltaire, William Godwin , and Tobias Smollet had produced examples of what might be loosely termed crime fiction in the eighteenth century , it was these tales that established the modern short detective story as a definite and distinct form.

In The Murders in the Rue Morgue , the most famous and entertaining of Poe's detective stories, we immediately recognize the structure of the modern detective tale. A hideous and inexplicable crime is committed (the brutal murder of two women in a locked room in Paris), and all the evidence is placed before us. The police, who rely on cunning and instinct rather than rational method and imagination, are utterly baffled. Fortunately for them, an amateur genius, Dupin, is on hand to unravel the mystery. The tale (which in terms of its action is written backward) thus includes two stories: that of the crime and that of its solution and explanation by Dupin.

In creating Dupin, Poe invented the archetype of the modern detective. Among Dupin's descendents are Agatha Christie 's Hercule Poirot, G. K. Chesterton 's Father Brown, and of course Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes, who in one of Conan Doyle's stories actually discusses Dupin's merits. An eccentric and reclusive genius, Dupin is both a poetic visionary and a detached man of reason; he combines the attributes of the poet with those of the mathematician. In The Purloined Letter , where he unravels a mystery by identifying with the criminal, Dupin also displays an actor's power of empathy. He is, in other words, a glorified and aristocratic version of Poe. Poe also created the original of the detective's companion: a friend of average intelligence who narrates the tale and who acts, as it were, as the reader's representative within it. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue , the character is nameless; in later works by other authors he will be called Doctor Watson and Captain Hastings.

Poe is thus in large part responsible for one of the most popular and dominant forms of modern literature. After reading Poe, the French writers the Goncourt brothers believed that they had discovered “the literature of the twentieth century —love giving place to deductions…the interest of the story moved from the heart to the head…from the drama to the solution.” This prediction proved correct. Twentieth-century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges (who believed that Poe's ghost dictated detective stories to him) consciously imitated Poe, and the popularity and influence of the detective story has been, and still is, enormous. The broader point made by the Goncourt brothers concerning a literature of “the head” is also interesting. The detective story is essentially an intellectual exercise or game, and much of Poe's writing can be described in these terms. Perhaps it is this quality in his work that made it so popular and influential in the twentieth century .

The invention, or at the very least the foundation, of the modern detective story is surely Poe's greatest contribution to world literature. He has also been hailed as the father of modern science fiction. The extent to which Poe established the genre is, however, a matter of controversy. Those who have argued for his formative influence point to the futuristic, technological, and rationalistic elements of his work. It is perhaps better to approach the question through a consideration of Poe's influence, which was enormous. Poe's science fiction stories profoundly influenced later masters of the genre such as Jules Verne , H. G. Wells , and Isaac Asimov (who conflated the science fiction tale and the detective story). Among the Poe stories that have been classed as science fiction are Hans Phaall , the eponymous hero's account of his nineteen-day balloon journey to the moon, and the futuristic Mellonta Tauta . Two stories in Tales , The Colloquy of Monos and Una and The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion , have also been classified as science fiction tales.

Both are dialogues between disembodied spirits set sometime in the distant future. The dialogue form, which derives from ancients such as Lucian and Plato , was very popular in Poe's time among satirical writers such as Thomas Love Peacock, Giacomo Leopardi , and William Blake . Poe also used it for satirical purposes; in these dialogues he criticizes his age for, among other things, its exclusive belief in science. Poe's argument with science was in some respects a typically romantic one. Science and industrialization, it is suggested in The Colloquy , have given humans the false idea that they have dominion over nature and have devalued the poetic intellect.

Yet Poe went further than this conventional romantic position and challenged science's claims to objectivity and its emphasis on empiricism. So far as objectivity is concerned, reading hoax stories such as Hans Phaall leaves the impression that scientific explanations of the world are not unlike stories and that science itself may be a kind of fiction. Regarding the limitations of empiricism, Poe believed that the discovery of facts was not enough and that it is what is done with them that is important. It requires, Poe suggests, a visionary rather than a scientist to sort, connect, and shape them into theories. This visionary figure, who is both poet and mathematician, appears throughout Poe's writings. Sometimes he is Dupin, the great detective; at other times he is Poe, the theorist of poetic composition and the author of the scientific prose poem Eureka .

Poe evidently believed that Eureka , published in 1848 , was his greatest achievement: “I have no desire to live since I have done ‘Eureka,’ ” he wrote to his mother-in-law. “I could accomplish nothing more.” Indeed, he appears to have regarded it as nothing less than the solution to the secret of the universe. It is most unfortunate for humanity, therefore, that Eureka makes extremely dull reading and is very difficult to understand. One of the best attempts at a summary is contained in Kenneth Silverman 's ( 1991 ) excellent biography of Poe. Suffice it to say here that Eureka , subtitled as “Essay on the material and the spiritual universe” predicted, among other things, the annihilation and the rebirth of the universe.

Although Eureka has traditionally been regarded as a distinct work within the Poe canon, there are many connections between it and the rest of his oeuvre. Passages in short stories such as Mellonta Tauta prefigure some of its contents. In his preface to the book Poe described it as a poem rather than a “scientific” work. “I offer this Book of Truths,” he wrote, adapting Keats's famous line, “not in the character of a Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it True.”

The rather confused critical reception that Eureka received also made it a typical Poe production. Some reviewers read it as an elaborate hoax in the manner of Hans Phaall ; others considered it to be a prolix and labored satire of scientific discourse. Certain critics regarded it as a brilliant and sincere work of genius, yet it was also dismissed as arrant fudge. Such diverse and extreme reactions to Poe's work have already been noted; they testify to the fact that, whatever else his writing is, it is impossible to ignore.

Poe's Influence

When Poe died in Baltimore on 7 October 1849 from causes that are still the subject of debate, some commentators predicted that his works would be forgotten. They could not have been more wrong, as his books are currently read throughout the world and his influence on world literature has been extraordinary. With their consummate artistry, their self-consciousness, and their heavy atmosphere of decay, Poe's poems and tales (along with his literary persona and his theories) inspired Decadent and symbolist writers of the nineteenth century . Baudelaire, among whose earliest works were translations of Poe's stories, famously died with a copy of Poe's tales beside his bed. Mallarmé, Verlaine, Dowson, and Wilde also worshipped at the Poe shrine.

At the end of the nineteenth century , science fiction writers such as Verne and Wells and authors of detective stories such as Conan Doyle acknowledged their profound debt to Poe. It was Conan Doyle who remarked that Poe's tales “have been so pregnant with suggestion…that each is a root from which a whole literature has developed.” In the twentieth century Poe's influence was no less profound. His short stories were of immense importance to authors as diverse as Kafka, H. P. Lovecraft (who referred to his tales of horror as “Poe stories”), Vladimir Nabokov , and Stephen King. He has also had a powerful effect on every other branch of the arts. Painters such as René Magritte and Edmund Dulac were fascinated by him, and film directors such as Roger Corman and Alfred Hitchcock also took inspiration from his writings.

Poe continues to inspire and enchant people today. In the future he will no doubt attract as much hostile criticism as he has in the past, but he will survive because he will continue to be read. And despite all of the faults and all of the fudge in his writings, it is hard, in conclusion, to think of another American writer who has so drastically altered the landscape of the popular imagination or who has had such a powerful effect on his fellow artists.

Selected Works

Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829)
Poems by Edgar A. Poe (1831)
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840)
The Raven and Other Poems (1845)
Tales (1845)
Eureka (1848)
Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1969–1978)
The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe (1976)
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings (1986)
Poetry, Tales, and Selected Essays (1996)

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 19, 2019 • ( 1 )

During his life, Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) was a figure of controversy and so became reasonably well known in literary circles. Two of his works were recognized with prizes: Manuscript Found in a Bottle and The Gold-Bug . The Raven , his most famous poem, created a sensation when it was published and became something of a best-seller. After his death, Poe’s reputation grew steadily—though in the United States opinion remained divided—until by the middle of the twentieth century he had clear status as an author of worldwide importance. Poe’s achievements may be measured in terms of what he has contributed to literature and of how his work influenced later culture.

Poe was accomplished in fiction, poetry, and criticism, setting standards in all three that distinguish him from most of his American contemporaries. In fiction, he is credited with inventing the conventions of the classical detective story, beginning the modern genre of science fiction, and turning the conventions of gothic fiction to the uses of high art in stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher . He was also an accomplished humorist and satirist. In poetry, he produced a body of work that is respected throughout the world and a few poems that have endured as classics, notably The Raven, as well as several poems that, in part because of their sheer verbal beauty, have persistently appealed to the popular imagination, such as The Bells and Annabel Lee . In criticism, Poe is among the first to advocate and demonstrate methods of textual criticism that came into their own in the twentieth century, notably in his essay The Philosophy of Composition , in which he analyzed with remarkable objectivity the process by which The Raven was built in order to produce a specified effect in its readers.

Poe’s influence on later culture was pervasive. Nearly every important American writer after Poe shows signs of his influence, especially when working in the gothic mode or with grotesque humor. The French, Italians, and writers in Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas acknowledge and demonstrate their debts to Poe in technique and vision. Only to begin to explore Poe’s influence on twentieth century music and film would be a major undertaking. In terms of his world reputation, Poe stands with William Faulkner and perhaps T. S. Eliot as one of the most influential authors of the United States.

The variety of Edgar Allan Poe’s short fiction cannot be conveyed fully in a short introduction. Though he is best known for his classics of gothic horror such as The Fall of the House of Usher and his portraits of madmen and grotesques such as The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado , he is also the author of detective stories, The Purloined Letter ; science fiction, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym ; parodies, The Premature Burial ; satires, The Man That Was Used Up ; social and political fiction, The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether ; and a variety of kinds of humor, Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences and Hop-Frog .

Three stories that illustrate some of this variety while offering insight into Poe’s characteristic themes are A Descent into the Maelström , The Purloined Letter, and The Fall of the House of Usher. Among Poe’s central themes is an emphasis on the mysteries of the self, of others, of nature, and of the universe. His stories usually function in part to undercut the kinds of easy optimism and certainty that were characteristic of popular thought in his time.

A Descent into the Maelström

A Descent into the Maelström, which first appeared in Graham’s Magazine in May, 1841, and was collected in Tales , opens with a declaration of mystery: “The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.” In using this epigraph, slightly altered from the seventeenth century English essayist Joseph Glanvill, Poe announces several motifs for the story that follows. One of these is the mystery of how God acts and, therefore, may be revealed in nature. Another is inadequacy of humanly devised models for explaining nature or God’s presence in nature. Yet another is the idea of the multiple senses of depth, not merely the physical depth of a well or a maelstrom, but also the metaphorical depths of a mystery, of God, of nature, of God’s manifestation in nature.

The story is relatively simple in its outline, though interestingly complicated by its frame. In the frame, the narrator visits a remote region of Norway to look upon the famous maelstrom, an actual phenomenon described in contemporary reference books that were Poe’s sources. There, he encounters an apparently retired fisherman, who guides him to a view of the whirlpool and who then tells the story of how he survived being caught in it. In the main body of the story, the guide explains how a sudden hurricane and a stopped watch caused him and his two brothers to be caught by the maelstrom as they attempted to return from a routine, if risky, fishing trip. He explains what the experience was like and how he managed to survive even though his boat and his brothers were lost. Poe carefully arranges the frame and the fisherman’s narration to emphasize his themes.

The frame narrator is a somewhat comic character. The guide leads him to what he calls a little cliff and calmly leans over its edge to point out the sights, but the narrator is terrified by the cliff itself: “In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky—while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds.” On one level this is high comedy. The narrator professes to be worried about his companion’s safety but cannot help revealing that he is personally terrified, and his resulting posture contrasts humorously with the equanimity of his guide. On another level, however, Poe is also suggesting at least two serious ideas. The narrator’s description of the cliff, with its sheer drop of sixteen hundred feet, should remind most readers that in a strong wind, they would feel and behave much the same as the narrator. This realization makes the next idea even more significant: The pose the narrator has adopted is pointedly a pose of worship drawn from the Old Testament of the Bible. The narrator abases himself full-length, not daring to look up while clinging to the earth. He behaves as if he is in the presence of God, and this is before the tide turns and the maelstrom forms. The tame scene evokes in the narrator the awe of a mortal in a god’s presence; when he sees the maelstrom, he feels he is looking into the heart of awesome, divine mystery.

When the maelstrom forms, when the earth really trembles and the sea boils and the heavens shout and the guide asks him what he sees and hears, he replies, “this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelström.” The narrator continues to see it as a more than natural phenomenon. Unable to accept the naturalistic account of it offered by the Encyclopædia Britannica , he is drawn instead by the power that it exerts over his imagination to see it as a manifestation of occult powers, an eruption of supernatural power into the natural world. This view forms the context within which the guide tells his tale.

An important feature of the guide’s story is the contrast between his sense of chaotic threat and his repeated perceptions that suggest an ordered purpose within this chaos. It almost seems at times as if the episode were designed to teach the fisherman a lesson that he would then pass on through the narrator to the reader, though conveying a simple moral seems not to be the fisherman’s purpose. For the fisherman, it was good fortune, assisted perhaps by a kind Providence, that allowed him to find a means of escape once his fishing boat had been sucked into the gigantic whirlpool and had begun its gradual descent toward the rushing foam at the bottom of the funnel of water. The main sign of design in these events is that just as the boat is blown into the whirlpool by the sudden and violent hurricane, a circle opens in the black clouds, revealing a bright moon that illuminates the scene of terror. This event makes the weather into a symmetrical picture: An inverted funnel of clouds ascending to an opening where the moon appears, over a funnel of whirling seawater descending into an obscured opening where a rainbow appears, “like that narrow and tottering bridge which Musselmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity.” This view of a tremendous overarching cosmic order composing a scene of mortal chaos produces other kinds of order that help to save the fisherman.

Bewitched by the beauty that he sees in this scene, the fisherman, like the narrator on the cliff-top, gains control of himself, loses his fear, and begins to look around, merely for the sake of enjoying it: “I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner . . . in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power.” Studying the beauty, he regains his self-possession, and in possession of his faculties, no longer terrified, he begins to understand how the whirlpool works, and he learns that different shapes and sizes of objects descend its sides at different rates. Attaching himself to a cylindrical barrel, he slows his descent enough that instead of going to the bottom and so across the mystical bridge he envisions there, he is borne up until the maelstrom stops and he finds himself again in comparatively calm water.

For the fisherman, his narrow escape is a tale of wonder, luck, and divine mercy. For the reader, however, carefully prepared by the narrator and supported by elements in the fisherman’s story upon which he does not comment, the story also illustrates the inscrutability of the God that may be visible in nature. This is not a God who operates nature solely for human benefit, though he has given humanity reason, aesthetic sense, and the power of faith that can allow people to survive in, and even enjoy, the terrors of nature. The fisherman’s brother, who survives the onslaught of the storm to experience the maelstrom with him, is never able to move by means of faith or the appreciation of beauty beyond his terror; this makes his despair at impending death insuperable, so he cannot discover a way of escape or even attempt the one offered by the fisherman.

Though not necessarily unique in this respect, the United States has throughout its history been a nation where large groups of people tended to assume that they had discovered the one truth that explained the universe and history and where it seemed easy to believe that a benevolent God had designed a manifest destiny for the nation and, perhaps, for humankind as a whole if led by American thought. Poe was among those who distrusted such thinking deeply. A Descent into the Maelström is one of many Poe stories in which part of the effect is to undercut such assumptions in his readers by emphasizing the mysteries of nature and the inadequacy of human ideas to encompass them, much less encompass the divinity of which nature might be a manifestation.

The Purloined Letter

Although A Descent into the Maelström emphasizes the inadequacy of human intelligence to comprehend God’s purposes in the universe, it also emphasizes the crucial importance of people using what intelligence they have to find truth and beauty in nature and experience. T he Purloined Letter, one of Poe’s best detective stories, places a greater emphasis on the nature and importance of intelligence, while still pointing at mysteries of human character. This story first appeared in two magazine versions in 1844: a shorter version in Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal and what has become the final version in The Gift . It was then collected in Tales.

The narrator and his friend C. Auguste Dupin are smoking and meditating in Dupin’s darkened library, when they are interrupted by the comical Monsieur G—, the prefect of the Paris police. The prefect tries to pretend that he is merely paying a friendly call, but he cannot help making it clear that he has come to Dupin with a troubling problem. He eventually explains that the MinisterD—has managed, in the presence of an important lady, presumably the queen, to steal from her a compromising letter with which he might damage her severely by showing it to her husband. He has since been using the threat of revealing the letter to coerce the queen’s cooperation in influencing policy. As the prefect repeats, to Dupin’s delight, getting the letter back without publicity ought to be simple for an expert policeman. One merely finds where it is hidden and takes it back. The letter must be within easy reach of the minister to be useful, and so by minute searching of his home and by having a pretended thief waylay him, the letter should surely be found. All these things have been done with great care, and the letter has not been found. The prefect is stumped. Dupin’s advice is to search again. A few weeks later, the prefect returns, still without success. Dupin then manipulates the prefect into declaring what he would pay to regain the letter, instructs him to write Dupin a check for that amount, and gives him the letter. The prefect is so astonished and gratified that he runs from the house, not even bothering to ask how Dupin has managed this feat.

The second half of the story consists of Dupin’s explanation to the narrator, with a joke or two at the prefect’s expense, of how he found and obtained the letter. As in Dupin’s other cases, notably the famous The Murders in the Rue Morgue , the solution involves a rigorous and seemingly miraculous application of rationality to the problem. Although in these stories Poe was establishing conventions for detection and stories about it that would flower richly in Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes, the principles upon which Dupin works are slightly but significantly different from Holmes’s principles.

One key difference is the importance of poetic imagination to the process. Most of Dupin’s explanation of his procedure has to do with how one goes about estimating the character and ability of one’s opponent, for understanding what the criminal may do is ultimately more important to a solution than successful deduction. It requires a kind of poet to penetrate the criminal’s mind; a “mere” mathematician can make competent deductions from given ideas, as the prefect has done. It takes a combination of poet and mathematician—in short, Dupin—to solve such a crime dependably. The prefect has greatly underestimated the minister because he is known to be a poet and the prefect believes poets are fools. Dupin says that the police often fail because they assume that the criminal’s intelligence mirrors their own, and therefore over- or underestimate the criminal’s ability. Having established that the minister is a very cunning opponent who will successfully imagine the police response to his theft, Dupin is able to deduce quite precisely how the minister will hide the letter, by placing it very conspicuously, so as not to appear hidden at all, and by disguising it. Dupin’s deduction proves exactly right, and by some careful plotting, he is able to locate and regain it.

The two main portions of the story, presenting the problem and the solution, illustrate the nature and powers of human reason. The end of the story emphasizes mystery by raising questions about morality. Although reason is a powerful instrument for solving problems and bringing about actions in the world, and solving problems is a satisfying kind of activity that makes Dupin feel proud and virtuous, his detecting occurs in a morally ambiguous world. The end of the story calls attention repeatedly to the relationship between Dupin and the Minister D—, a final quotation from a play even hinting that they could be brothers, though there is no other evidence that this is the case. Dupin claims intimate acquaintance and frequent association with the minister; indeed, these are the foundation of his inferences about the man’s character and ability. They disagree, however, politically. The nature of this disagreement is not explained, but the story takes place in nineteenth century Paris, and Dupin’s actions seem to support the royal family against a rebellious politician. Dupin, in leaving a disguised substitute for the regained letter, has arranged for the minister’s fall from power and may even have endangered his life.

By providing this kind of information at the end, Poe raises moral and political questions, encouraging the reader to wonder whether Dupin’s brilliant detection serves values of which the reader might approve. To those questions, the story offers no answers. In this way, Dupin’s demonstration of a magnificent human intellect is placed in the context of moral mystery, quite unlike the tales of Sherlock Holmes and related classical detectives. On a moral level, who are Dupin and the minister, and what are the meanings of their actions with regard to the well-being of French citizens? Although Poe invented what became major conventions in detective fiction— the rational detective, his less able associate, the somewhat ridiculous police force, the solution scene—his detective stories show greater moral complexity than those of his best-known followers.

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher has everything a Poe story is supposed to have according to the popular view of him: a gothic house, a terrified narrator, live burial, madness, and horrific catastrophe. One of his most popular and most discussed stories, this one has been variously interpreted by critics, provoking controversy about how to read it that remains unsettled. This story was first published in 1839, and it appeared in both of Poe’s fiction collections.

The narrator journeys to the home of his boyhood chum, Roderick Usher, a man of artistic talent and generous reputation. Usher has been seriously ill and wishes the cheerful companionship of his old friend. The narrator arrives at the grimly oppressive house in its equally grim and oppressive setting, determined to be cheerful and helpful, but finds himself overmatched. The house and its environs radiate gloom, and though Usher alternates between a kind of creative mania and the blackest depression, he tends also on the whole to radiate gloom. Usher confides that he is upset in part because his twin sister, Madeline, is mortally ill. It develops, however, that the main reason Usher is depressed is that he has become in some way hypersensitive, and this sensitivity has revealed to him that his house is a living organism that is driving him toward madness. The narrator does not want to believe this, but the longer he stays in the house with Usher, the more powerfully Usher’s point of view dominates him. Madeline dies and, to discourage grave robbers, Usher and the narrator temporarily place her in a coffin in a vault beneath the house. Once Madeline is dead, Usher’s alternation of mood ceases, and he remains always deeply gloomy.

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher

On his last evening at Usher, the narrator witnesses several events that seem to confirm Usher’s view that the house is driving him mad. Furthermore, these confirmations seem to suggest that the house is just one in a nest of Chinese boxes, in a series of closed, walled-in enclosures that make up the physical and spiritual universe. This oft-repeated image is represented most vividly in one of Usher’s paintings, what appears to be a burial vault unnaturally lit from within. This image conveys the idea of the flame of human consciousness imprisoned, as if buried alive in an imprisoning universe. The terrifying conviction of this view is one of the causes of Usher’s growing madness. On the last evening, a storm seems to enclose the house as if it were inside a box of wind and cloud, on which the house itself casts an unnatural light. The narrator tries to comfort both himself and Usher by reading a story, but the sound effects described in the story are echoed in reality in the house. Usher, as his reason crumbles, interprets these sounds as Madeline, not really dead, breaking through various walls behind which she has been placed—her coffin and the vault—until finally, Usher claims, she is standing outside the door of the room where they are reading. The door opens, perhaps supernaturally, and there she stands. The narrator watches the twins fall against each other and collapse; he rushes outside only to see the house itself collapse into its reflection in the pool that stands before it, this last event taking place under the unnatural light of a blood-red moon.

Such a summary helps to reveal one of the main sources of conflicting interpretation. How could such events really occur? Is not this a case of an unreliable narrator, driven toward a horrific vision by some internal conflicts that might be inferred from the content of the vision? This viewpoint has tended to dominate critical discussion of the story, provoking continuous opposition from more traditionally minded readers who argue that The Fall of the House of Usher is a supernatural tale involving occult forces of some kind. Both modes of interpretation have their problems, and so neither has been able to establish itself as superior to the other.

One of the main difficulties encountered by both sides is accounting for the way that the narrator tells his story. He seems involved in the same sort of problem that the community of literary critics experiences. He is represented as telling the story of this experience some time after the events took place. He insists that there are no supernatural elements in his story, that everything that happened at the House of Usher can be accounted for in a naturalistic way. In this respect, he is like the narrator of A Descent into the Maelström. He “knows” that the natural world operates according to regular “natural” laws, but when he actually sees the whirlpool, his imagination responds involuntarily with the conviction that this is something supernatural. Likewise, the narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher is convinced that the world can be understood in terms of natural law and, therefore, that what has happened to him at Usher either could not have happened or must have a natural explanation. Like the narrator of The Black Cat, another of Poe’s most famous stories, this narrator hopes that by telling the story, perhaps again, he will arrive at an acceptable explanation or that his listener will confirm his view of the events.

Perhaps The Fall of the House of Usher is a kind of trap, set to enmesh readers in the same sort of difficulty in which the narrator finds himself. If this is the case, then the story functions in a way consistent with Poe’s theme of the inadequacy of models constructed by human intelligence to map the great mysteries of life and the universe. The narrator says he has had an experience that he cannot explain and that points toward an inscrutable universe, one that might be conceived as designed to drive humans mad if they find themselves compelled to comprehend it. Likewise, in reading the story, the reader has an experience that finally cannot be explained, that seems designed to drive readers mad if they insist upon achieving a final view of its wholeness. The story itself may provide an experience that demonstrates the ultimate inadequacy of human reason to understand the mysteries of creation.

Although Poe wrote a variety of stories, he is best remembered for his tales of terror and madness. His popular literary reputation is probably a distorted view of Poe, both as person and as artist. Although he was tragically addicted to alcohol and while he did experience considerable difficulty in a milieu that was not particularly supportive, he was nevertheless an accomplished artist whose work, especially when viewed as a whole, is by no means the mere outpouring of a half-mad, anguished soul. To look closely at any of his best work is to see ample evidence of a writer in full artistic control of his materials, calculating his effects with a keen eye. Furthermore, to examine the range and quantity of his writing, to attend to the quantity of his humor— of which there are interesting examples even in The Fall of the House of Usher —to notice the beauty of his poetry, to study the learned intelligence of his best criticism—in short, to see Poe whole—must lead to the recognition that his accomplishments far exceed the narrow view implied by his popular reputation.

Principal short fiction • Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840; The Prose Romances of Edgar Allan Poe, 1843; Tales, 1845; The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, 1976 (Stuart Levine and Susan Levine, editors).

Other Major Works Play: Politian, pb. 1835-1836. Novels: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838. Miscellaneous: The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, 1902 (17 volumes); Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, 1969, 1978 (3 volumes). Nonfiction: The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, 1948; Literary Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe, 1965; Essays and Reviews, 1984. Poetry: Tamerlane, and Other Poems, 1827; Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, 1829; Poems, 1831; The Raven, and Other Poems, 1845; Eureka: A Prose Poem, 1848; Poe: Complete Poems, 1959; Poems, 1969 (volume 1 of Collected Works).

Bibliography Brown, Arthur A. “Literature and the Impossibility of Death: Poe’s ‘Berenice.’” Nineteenth- Century Literature 50 (March, 1996): 448-463. Burluck, Michael L. Grim Phantasms: Fear in Poe’s Short Fiction. New York: Garland, 1993. Carlson, Eric, ed. Critical Essays on Edgar Allan Poe. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987. Crisman, William. “Poe’s Dupin as Professional, the Dupin Stories as Serial Text.” Studies in American Fiction 23 (Autumn, 1995): 215-229. Frank, Lawrence. “‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’: Edgar Allan Poe’s Evolutionary Reverie.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 50 (September, 1995): 168-188. Kennedy, J. Gerald. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. May, Charles E. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1991. ____________, ed. Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition. 8 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2004. Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1998. Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allen Poe, A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 2001. Thoms, Peter. Detection and Its Designs: Narrative and Power in Nineteenth-Century Detective Fiction. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998. Whalen, Terence. Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in Antebellum America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.

The Best Edgar Allan Poe Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was a pioneer of the short story form, but he was also an accomplished poet. Below, we’ve selected ten of Poe’s very best poems and offered a short introduction to each of them.

‘ The Raven ’.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ‘’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.’

This poem had to head the list of a selection of Edgar Allan Poe’s best poems, really. It is the only literary work to inspire the name of a sporting team (the American Football team the Baltimore Ravens).

According to Poe himself, in a later work of literary analysis, if he hadn’t had a change of heart we might well be reading a poem called, not ‘The Raven’, but ‘ The Parrot ’ (although he may have been pulling his readers’ legs there).

The unnamed narrator sits up late one dreary winter night, mourning the loss of his beloved, Lenore, when a raven appears at the window and speaks the repeated single word, ‘Nevermore’. The narrator starts to view the raven as some sort of prophet. Follow the link above to read the poem in full and learn more about it.

‘ To Helen ’.

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

This early poem was first published in 1831 in Poems of Edgar A. Poe , which appeared when Poe was still in his early twenties, although Poe made a few tweaks to the poem in 1845.

Poe addresses Helen of Troy, reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the classical world. But as well as such universal resonances, ‘To Helen’ also has more personal links to Edgar Allan Poe’s own life, and indeed the poem has been analysed in terms of its biographical associations.

Jane Stanard, the mother of one of Poe’s childhood friends, had been the first person to encourage Poe in his writing ambitions, at a time when Poe’s foster-father thought he should be doing other things.

‘To Helen’ was one of the first poems Poe wrote, and he wrote it for her. Poe was most likely only a teenager when he wrote ‘To Helen’. If only we could all be so deft with a pen at such a young age! Follow the link above to read the poem in full and learn more about it.

‘ Ulalume ’.

Subtitled ‘A Ballad’, this longer poem shares, with ‘The Raven’, a narrator who has lost his loved one. The brooding narrator wanders the moors one October night, unaware that he is meandering in the direction of the tomb of his lost beloved.

Although criticised for privileging stylish sound-effects over richness of content (by Aldous Huxley among others, who called it, in something of a mixed review, ‘a carapace of jewelled sound’), the poem is a great one for reading aloud during the Halloween season and makes our pick of the best Halloween poems .

‘ A Dream within a Dream ’.

Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

How can we separate reality from illusion? What if, to quote from Poe’s poem, ‘All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream’? One of Poe’s more famous poems, ‘A Dream within a Dream’ muses on the fragility and fleetingness of everything, and asks whether anything we do has any lasting or real effect: ‘ All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream.’ See the link above to read this dreamy poem in full.

‘ The Bells ’.

Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells – From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

This poem earns its place on this list not least because it gave us the delightful word ‘tintinnabulation’, to describe the ringing of bells. If ‘Ulalume’ was a carapace of jewelled sound, ‘The Bells’ is another such sonic carapace, a masterpiece of onomatopoeia…

‘ Sonnet—To Science ’.

Poe was greatly interested in science, and among his literary achievements is a long prose-poem-cum-essay, Eureka , which is subtitled in some edition of Poe’s work ‘An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe’.

In this shorter poem, a sonnet following the Shakespearean or English rhyme scheme , Poe calls science ‘true daughter of Old Time’ which ‘alterest all things with thy peering eyes’. But although ‘Sonnet – To Science’ may appear to be a hymn to the importance of scientific endeavour and discovery, there’s a little more going on in this poem.

This sonnet was written when Poe was a young Romantic poet, and it bears the influence of John Keats, who had attacked science, in his poem ‘Lamia’, for destroying the sense of mystery and awe in the world

‘ Eldorado ’.

A knight goes in search of Eldorado, that golden paradise, in this short poem. But the knight grows old without ever finding that fabled city. And then he meets a shade which tells him where he can find Eldorado. Follow the link above to read the full poem.

‘ The Haunted Palace ’.

The palace of this poem is a palace of the mind, found in ‘the monarch Thought’s dominion’. This is a haunted palace because, whilst it is beautiful, it is also inhabited by ‘evil things, in robes of sorrow’ which ‘assailed the monarch’s high estate’. This poem may well have had its origins in Poe’s own troubled life, his battle with alcoholism, and his bouts of depression.

‘ The City in the Sea ’.

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.

This is another Poe poem which was originally written when he was still in his early twenties, in 1831, but was rewritten for publication in 1845.

Part Gothic poem and part fantasy, this poem tells of an underwater city ruled by Death himself: ‘Death has reared himself a throne / In a strange city lying alone / Far down within the dim West, / Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best / Have gone to their eternal rest…’

‘ Annabel Lee ’.

This seems like a fitting poem to conclude this list of Poe’s greatest poems, since it was the last poem he completed before his untimely death in 1849.

Precisely who the inspiration for the character of ‘Annabel Lee’ was remains a mystery, although Poe’s cousin, whom he fell in love with when she was thirteen, is the leading candidate. The narrator fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were both young and his love for her continues even after her death. Follow the link above to read the whole sorry tale.

Continue to explore the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe with our celebration of his contribution to literature , our pick of his best short stories , and our exploration of his use of the short story form .

4 thoughts on “The Best Edgar Allan Poe Poems Everyone Should Read”

Great post. :) Poe was my first favorite literary author. I think I came upon his work when I was in middle school and beginning my angsty teenage years, so his moroseness was easy to relate to :)

Thank you! Poe is one of those writers, isn’t he, who really make a mark during our teenage years. I had a similar thing with A. E. Housman, and I think Plath is another one.

170 years after poor old Poe’s death his poems remain celebrated and permanently in print. Sniffy critics like Harold Bloom are wrong and deserve to be walled up with Fortunato and a cask of amontillado

Edgar Alan Poe, the favorite poem creator of all times for my late Husband, Charles Harold Smith Jr.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer and critic famous for his dark, mysterious poems and stories, including “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Who Was Edgar Allan Poe?

Quick facts, army and west point, writing career as a critic and poet, poems: “the raven” and “annabel lee”, short stories, legacy and museum.

FULL NAME: Edgar Allan Poe BORN: January 19, 1809 DIED: October 7, 1849 BIRTHPLACE: Boston, Massachusetts SPOUSE: Virginia Clemm Poe (1836-1847) ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Edgar Allan Poe was born Edgar Poe on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Edgar never really knew his biological parents: Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a British actor, and David Poe Jr., an actor who was born in Baltimore. His father left the family early in Edgar’s life, and his mother died from tuberculosis when he was only 2.

Separated from his brother, William, and sister, Rosalie, Poe went to live with his foster parents, John and Frances Allan, in Richmond, Virginia. John was a successful tobacco merchant there. Edgar and Frances seemed to form a bond, but he had a more difficult relationship with John.

By age 13, Poe was a prolific poet, but his literary talents were discouraged by his headmaster and by John, who preferred that young Edgar follow him in the family business. Preferring poetry over profits, Poe reportedly wrote poems on the back of some of Allan’s business papers.

miles george, thomas goode tucker, and edgar allan poe

Money was also an issue between Poe and John. Poe went to the University of Virginia in 1826, where he excelled in his classes. However, he didn’t receive enough money from John to cover all of his costs. Poe turned to gambling to cover the difference but ended up in debt.

He returned home only to face another personal setback—his neighbor and fiancée Sarah Elmira Royster had become engaged to someone else. Heartbroken and frustrated, Poe moved to Boston.

In 1827, around the time he published his first book, Poe joined the U.S. Army. Two years later, he learned that his mother, Frances, was dying of tuberculosis, but by the time he returned to Richmond, she had already died.

While in Virginia, Poe and his father briefly made peace with each other, and John helped Poe get an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Poe excelled at his studies at West Point, but he was kicked out after a year for his poor handling of his duties.

During his time at West Point, Poe had fought with John, who had remarried without telling him. Some have speculated that Poe intentionally sought to be expelled to spite his father, who eventually cut ties with Poe.

After leaving West Point, Poe published his third book and focused on writing full-time. He traveled around in search of opportunity, living in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Richmond. In 1834, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, but providing for an illegitimate child Allan had never met.

Poe, who continued to struggle living in poverty, got a break when one of his short stories won a contest in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter . He began to publish more short stories and, in 1835, landed an editorial position with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe developed a reputation as a cut-throat critic, writing vicious reviews of his contemporaries. His scathing critiques earned him the nickname the “Tomahawk Man.”

His tenure at the magazine proved short, however. Poe’s aggressive reviewing style and sometimes combative personality strained his relationship with the publication, and he left the magazine in 1837. His problems with alcohol also played a role in his departure, according to some reports.

Poe went on to brief stints at Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine , Graham’s Magazine , as well as The Broadway Journal , and he also sold his work to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger , among other journals.

In 1844, Poe moved to New York City. There, he published a news story in The New York Sun about a balloon trip across the Atlantic Ocean that he later revealed to be a hoax. His stunt grabbed attention, but it was his publication of “The Raven,” in 1845, that made Poe a literary sensation.

That same year, Poe found himself under attack for his stinging criticisms of fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . Poe claimed that Longfellow, a widely popular literary figure, was a plagiarist, which resulted in a backlash against Poe.

Despite his success and popularity as a writer, Poe continued to struggle financially, and he advocated for higher wages for writers and an international copyright law.

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 . Later on came poems such as “Ulalume” and “The Bells.”

“The Raven”

Poe’s poem “The Raven,” published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror , is considered among the best-known poems in American literature and one of the best of Poe’s career. An unknown narrator laments the demise of his great love Lenore and is visited by a raven, who insistently repeats one word: “Nevermore.” In the work, which consists of 18 six-line stanzas, Poe explored some of his common themes: death and loss.

“Annabel Lee”

This lyric poem again explores Poe’s themes of death and loss and might have been written in memory of his beloved wife, Virginia, who died two years prior its publication. The poem was published on October 9, 1849, two days after Poe’s death, in the New York Tribune .

In late 1830s, Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , a collection of short stories. It contained several of his most spine-tingling tales, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “Ligeia,” and “William Wilson.”

In 1841, Poe launched the new genre of detective fiction with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” His literary innovations earned him the nickname “Father of the Detective Story.” A writer on the rise, he won a literary prize in 1843 for “The Gold Bug,” a suspenseful tale of secret codes and hunting treasure.

“The Black Cat”

Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” was published in 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post . In it, the narrator, a one-time animal lover, becomes an alcoholic who begins abusing his wife and black cat. By the macabre story’s end, the narrator observes his own descent into madness as he kills his wife, a crime his black cat reports to the police. The story was later included in the 1845 short story collection, Tales by Edgar Allan Poe .

Later in his career, Poe continued to work in different forms, examining his own methodology and writing in general in several essays, including “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Poetic Principle,” and “The Rationale of Verse.” He also produced the thrilling tale, “The Cask of Amontillado.”

From 1831 to 1835, Poe lived in Baltimore, where his father was born, with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. He began to devote his attention to Virginia; his cousin became his literary inspiration as well as his love interest. The couple married in 1836 when she was only 13 years old and he was 27.

In 1847, at the age of 24—the same age when Poe’s mother and brother also died—Virginia passed away from tuberculosis. Poe was overcome by grief following her death, and although he continued to work, he suffered from poor health and struggled financially until his death in 1849.

Poe died on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore at age 40.

His final days remain somewhat of a mystery. Poe left Richmond on ten days earlier, on September 27, and was supposedly on his way to Philadelphia. On October 3, he was found in Baltimore in great distress. Poe was taken to Washington College Hospital, where he died four days later. His last words were “Lord, help my poor soul.”

At the time, it was said that Poe died of “congestion of the brain.” But his actual cause of death has been the subject of endless speculation. Some experts believe that alcoholism led to his demise while others offer up alternative theories. Rabies, epilepsy, and carbon monoxide poisoning are just some of the conditions thought to have led to the great writer’s death.

Shortly after his passing, Poe’s reputation was badly damaged by his literary adversary Rufus Griswold. Griswold, who had been sharply criticized by Poe, took his revenge in his obituary of Poe, portraying the gifted yet troubled writer as a mentally deranged drunkard and womanizer. He also penned the first biography of Poe, which helped cement some of these misconceptions in the public’s minds.

Although Poe never had financial success in his lifetime, he has become one of America’s most enduring writers. His works are as compelling today as they were more than a century ago. An innovative and imaginative thinker, Poe crafted stories and poems that still shock, surprise, and move modern readers. His dark work influenced writers including Charles Baudelaire , Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Stephane Mallarme.

The Baltimore home where Poe stayed from 1831 to 1835 with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Poe’s cousin and future wife Virginia, is now a museum. The Edgar Allan Poe House offers a self-guided tour featuring exhibits on Poe’s foster parents, his life and death in Baltimore, and the poems and short stories he wrote while living there, as well as memorabilia including his chair and desk.

The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
Lord, help my poor soul.
Sound loves to revel near a summer night.
But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must not—they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
And now—have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
[I]f you wish to forget anything upon the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

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113 Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Examples

In case you’re searching for Edgar Allan Poe research paper topics to write about his life, death, and legacy, check the list. Our team has gathered ideas on the author and gothic literature below.

🏆 Best Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Examples

👍 interesting edgar allan poe research paper topics, 💡 most interesting edgar allan poe topics to write about, ❓ research questions about edgar allan poe.

The Tell-Tale Heart Psychological Analysis & Critique The outstanding character in the tale, who is also the narrator, attracts a lot of attention from the readers. The narrator forms the basis of the tale.
“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe He entombs the corpse in the basement of his house, and when the police unexpectedly show up at his house, he inadvertently leads them to the corpse.
Literary Devices in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As such, Montresor finds his companion’s “transgression” worthy of the cruelest death, and believes that his cause is so right that he deserves to get away with it. Hyperbole There is a sense of this […]
“Annabel Lee” and “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe Although the plot is different in each of these poems, both Annabel Lee and The Raven share the themes of death and lost love, as well as the symbolic language.
Edgar Allan Poe – American Literature The main themes that are evident in his work are the themes of death and love. He speaks of a chilling wind from the sky that emerged resulting in the death of her wife.
Edgar Allan Poe: The Style of Fictional Works Minister D walked in and saw the contents of the letter, produced another copy that almost looked like the stolen one, and placed it next to the important letter.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Story “The Black Cat” For instance, when the main character looked at the image of the cat on the wall, he saw it as “gigantic”; however, whether the size of the animal was an expression of paranormal or the […]
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: The Role of the Narrator The role of the narrator of the story The Fall of the House of Usher is great indeed; his rationality and his ability to represent the events from the side of an immediate participant of […]
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Poe This metaphor is necessary to show that the feeling of guilt distorts his perception of reality. This is one of the details that can be distinguished.
Literature Symbols in “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe In spite of the fact that there are many symbols of different types in Poe’s “The Raven”, such symbols of darkness and depression as December, the raven, the Night’s Plutonian shore, and the repetition of […]
“The Fall of the House of Usher” & “The Cask of Amontillado”: Summaries, Settings, and Main Themes As the narration progresses, fear arises in the reader or viewer, and finally, something horrific happens.”The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of the Amontillado” share all of the features above, as […]
Edgar Allan Poe: Interpretation of “The Raven” One of the suggestions that dominate Poe’s talent in writing “The Raven” was the succession of terrible events the author encountered in his life.
Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career Edgar died in Baltimore and the cause of his death was not clear. Edgar, in his element, overcame challenges and established a literary legacy that has stood the test of time.
Edgar Allan Poe: ”The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” In this discourse two of his famous short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are studied in an attempt to better understand the use of symbolism, the literary tool of irony, and […]
The Single Effect in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado The very first words uttered by the author at the start of the story carried the hook necessary to reel the reader into the story with the desired effect.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Views on Madness in “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” The lesson that can be learned through the interface of this Poe’s short story is that no one can be trusted due to the lack of background information and deceptive practices.
Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Literature Analysis He tries to justify his actions, and show that he is not a bad person. Most importantly, he tries to show that he is not a mad man.
The “Eldorado” Poem Analysis by Edgar Allan Poe The structure of the poem is AABCCB. Edgar Allan Poe vastly uses metaphors and sight sensory in the poem.
The Poem “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe The beginning of the poem reveals the narrator’s feelings toward Annabel Lee, determining the theme and the mood of the verse: “a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee; […]
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe Analysis A poem that deals with family relationships and explain the poem’s meaning The poem is heavily based on the relationship between the narrator and Lenore with their affection being the subject of the whole poem.
Revenge Theme in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe He, therefore, decides to seek revenge, but he wants to be careful in order not to risk his life. Fortunato seems to be fond of wine against Montresor, and he decides to use this as […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado Although the revelation of the character of Montressor was done indirectly, the fact that he was also the narrator of the story enabled readers to have access to his thoughts and feelings.
The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe Poetry The head is alluded to the palace, while all the evil spirits mentioned represent the thoughts of a human beings mind.
Imagery Use in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe The story utilizes graphical language and imagery in the development of a sense of deceptive and persuasive nature and circumstances in the expansion of the symbolic approach of sustaining a condition of suspense. The imagery […]
“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry Analysis It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with […]
Montressor in The Cask of Amontillado In addition, Montressor said that he was a friend of Fortunato but he seemed to have acted out of character when he assumed the habits and characteristics of a cold blooded killer.
Irony in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As the atmosphere of gaiety during the carnival changes to the horror from the catacombs beneath Montresor’s palazzo the reader ascertains that the carnival was a prelude created by the author to admit the drastic […]
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe: Poem Analysis Expecting the sound to be caused by the wind, the speaker opens the window, through which a raven flies into the room.
Analysis of “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe After having lost his cat when a fire broke in his house, he felt a great need for another pet, same as that of Pluto, his pet cat.”This, then, was the very creature of which […]
Inside the Narrator’s Mind: “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe It is significantly the working of the inner self or the perpetual threat of the unconscious to the conscious that leads the protagonist to the ultimate confession of the crime even when he is not […]
Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe portrays the Usher family as struggling to survive albeit in a gloomy manner that involves degradation, disease, and death.”The Fall of the House of Usher” is […]
The Investigation of Ethical Issues in The Tell-Tale Heart and The Pond The secondary problem is related to an ethical dilemma with regards to the responsibility of the husband to provide and care for the family.
“The Black Cat” Short Story by Edgar Allan Poe The purpose of the short story has long been a subject of debate.”The Black Cat,” while having some characteristics of the horror genre, presents a psychoanalytical approach to the mind of a psychopath, a scrutiny […]
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe The neighbors who heard the scuffle that ensued and went to the ladies house gave evidence to the police, and in as much as most of them agree on a great extent to the events […]
Gothic Romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe When the thought of today, the nineteenth-century writer Edgar Allan Poe is remembered as the master of the short story and the psychological thriller.
“Annabel Lee” Multi Rhythmic Poem by Edgar A. Poe Therefore, the author’s works created a powerful impact on the establishment of a connection between content and literary form. Thus, Poe’s writings possess the power to show the links between a concept and a form […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man in the Crowd” Story The structure of the tale, its manner of narration, and the minimal number of main characters are only some of the features that make “The Man in the Crowd” one of the most memorable short […]
Literary Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” The poem is imbued with a melancholy mood, which is stated in the first lines of the work. This is the main point of the poem.
Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” Review The tension intensifies with every stanza till the third one from the end after which the narrator understands the senselessness of the situation in searching for the answers for his questions in the raven’s “nevermore”.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Life, Poems, Short Stories The recognition of his works is based mainly on the uniqueness of the themes and characters the author created, as well as his excellent command of the language and exceptional imagery and style.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe Literature Analysis Although “The Fall of the House of Usher” is traditionally believed to be a timeless horror story and a representation of the deepest human fears, it can also be viewed both as a product of […]
“Annabel Lee” the Work by Edgar Allen Poe The narrative description of the elegy expresses the narrator’s undying love for ‘Annabel Lee’ detailing a love which had originated many a year ago in the unidentified ‘kingdom by the sea’.
Gothic Romanticism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Nathaniel Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” In the film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky, Nina struggles to fit into the ultimate role of the play “The Swan Lake”, as the Black Swan, even though she is comfortable playing the […]
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) This section tackles the main characters of the story and as aforementioned, the narrator and the old man are the only central characters in the story.
Literary Approaches in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” In this story, the protagonist, whose wife was Ligeia, tells of the happiness he found in his marriage to her before her untimely death.
“The Raven” Poem by Edgar Allen Poe The raven’s “Nevermore” throughout the poem is a repetition that enhances the poem’s lyrical mood and emphasizes the main character’s hopelessness.
Edgar Allan Poe: Brief Biography Sublime’s exploration of the darkest sides of the human soul and psyche has contributed greatly to the development of the horror genre.
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe Ideally, using the subjective understanding of Poe’s work, it is possible to evaluate some of the qualities of the story. At the same time, the setting of the story creates a lot of suspense for […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s Life From Primary Sources I had indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I found one in the death of my wife [in 1847]. In the death of what was my life, then, I receive a […]
Conciseness in “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe The main arguments towards the development of the contemporary short story will be discussed in this essay, and the similarities between these visions and the statements in “The Tell-Tale Heart” will be described.
Epilogue to “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe It is that the murder is a reason for the fifty-two years-old disappearance of the respected Fortunato, and the Montresor’s guild is undeniable”.
Edgar Allan Poe: Literary Devices and Their Meaning The purpose of his style, ornate and yet concise, of the grotesque characters, the growing tension in the narrative is “the greatest possible effect on his readers”.
“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe The plot is told from the first person as the pronoun “I” is used and the story is told in the past tense.
The Rejection in the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe The main character depicts his nervousness and the feeling of fear and anger caused by the old man’s vulture eye. He thinks that the police are simply making a mockery of his horror and points […]
The Gothic-Romantic Story, “Ligeia” by Edgar Allan Poe It is also known that vampires typically rest during the day only to rise in the light of the moon. Thus, to my mind, the image of Poe’s Ligeia is strongly associated with a vampire […]
Edgar Poe and “The Cask of Amontillado” On the day of the carnival Montresor goes looking for Fortunato and finds him a bit tipsy and it is then that he tells him of how he had acquired a rare kind of amontillado […]
Alfred Hitchcock and Edgar Allan Poe: Synthesized Approach There are certain commonalities between the artistic and symbolic representations of both writers/directors, especially in their representation of the madness and paranoia that exists in the world when people are placed in isolation and the […]
Edgar Allen Poe’s Influence on Hitchcock From the above discussion, it can be said that Hitchcock’s work was greatly influenced by the work of Poe particularly in building the audience’s suspense and manipulating their attention.
Narration and Symbolism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” The narrator of the story performs the role of the main rhetorical device that ensures the disclosure of the main theme of the story.
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher In particular, we may analyze such novellas as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
Jury Defense and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe As a member of the jury sitting in on the trial of Montressor, I feel it is necessary for me to explain the reasons why the jury came to the conclusion it did.
Edgar Allen Poe’s Madeline’s and Ligeia’s Animas Examining works such as the short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia” reveals much of Poe’s character through the form of his anima.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Fear of Premature Burial For instance, in The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat the police arrive and stimulate a desire on the part of the narrator to confess his crime and undergo punishment from the state.
Military Career of Edgar Allan Poe Often overlooked, however, is the story of Poe’s life: the heartbreak, financial struggles, success, mysterious death, and of course his military career. The success of the ominous poem gave Poe a steady income and cemented […]
“The Tell-Tale Heart” Short Story by Edgar A. Poe He begins by complaining about the old man’s eye, but it is the imaginary beating of his heart that breaks down his resolve and makes him confess.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Allan Edgar Poe This provides us with the clue, as to the discursive significance of the old man’s eye, as one of the story’s foremost motifs.
Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Ligeia” His method of murder signifies what he knows of stone masonry, of which he is a member, instead of the Masons, which is a secret organization that Fortunato is a member of.
Edgar Allan Poe, an American Romanticism Writer Poe’s three works “The fall of the house of Usher”, “the Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death” describe his dedication to literature and his negative attitudes towards aristocracy.
“Ligeia” a Book by Edgar Allan Poe Since the fact that the narrator is not in full control of the mind, this is made very apparent by the author, it could mean that Ligeia and Rowena are really the same people and […]
Edgar Poe’s Annabel Lee: Narrative Text Analysis As death and mortality along with love make the key themes of the poem, it will be reasonable to suggest that the mood of the latter is quite dark, despite the lyrical tone and the […]
“Black Cat” a Story by Edgar Allan Poe In turn, the use of various stylistic devices helps the writer create a sense of suspense and show the immense moral tension that the main character struggles with.
Edgar Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” Literature Analysis The main character in “The Cask of Amontillado” is Montresor with Fortunato being a minor character in the short story. Also, Montresor is the story’s narrator, and a lot of details about his character are […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s and Herman Melville Comparison To this end, the current paper is a comparative review of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and Melville’s “Billy Budd”.
Comparison of Works by Stephen Crane and Allan Poe Although Crane’s stories are imaginary, the reader can picture houses and the community in ‘The Monster’ or the town of Yellow Sky in ‘The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.’ He vividly describes the living conditions […]
Narrative Perspectives in Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” One of the reasons why the story The Cask of Amontillado and the poem My Last Duchess are being commonly referred to, as such that represent a particularly high value, is that the narrative perspective […]
Mini Anthology: Poe Edgar Allan and Dickson Emily’ Works The other story that Poe Allen has written is “The fall of the House of Usher” whereby the main theme is about the haunted house, which is crumbling and this aspects brings out a Gothic […]
Evans, Walter. “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Poe’s Theory of the Tale. In this article, Walter Evans discusses the narrative style of Edgar Allan Poe and speaks about the peculiarities of such a short story as The Fall of the House of Usher.
Edgar Allan Poe: Analyzing Literature Works Paying attention to such pieces of writing The Cask of Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, Annabel Lee, and The Raven it is possible to say that the main idea of these […]
Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Themes Coincidentally, he dedicated his first wave of writing to themes of innocence and beauty coupled with “Love and Joy as dynamic life values in the poet’s feeling for the potentiality of the harmony of mind […]
The Style and Themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s Literature In the first stanza, the departure of the lover marks the end of their love, while the second stanza uses the dropping of sand as symbolic to the passing of time in an hour glass.
The Tell-Tale Heart Essay However, when the police came to the Old Man’s house he gives himself away to the police because he hears the heart of the old man beating behind the floorboard and this incident may suggest […]
Dark Humor in The Cask of Amontillado Essay The use of horror and humor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe is one of the literary features that the author uses to constructs the story.
A Perfect Place for a Perfect Crime: Creating the Impeccable Setting It must be admitted that with his unusual gift of depicting the most petrifying environment so that it immediately rises in front of the reader’s eyes, Poe creates the perfect setting in The Cask of […]
Poe’s Favorite Subject Matter Is Death This is not an exaggerated statement judging from terms and imagery used in at least four of his popular works such as The Cask of Amontillado; The Black Cat; The Tell-Tale Heart; and The Masque […]
Poe’s life and how it influenced his work He feels privileged to have such a creature in his room and the fact that the raven answers his question of what its name is with the word “Nevermore”, adds to his excitement.
How Did Edgar Allan Poe Influence Literature?
How Does Edgar Allan Poe Keep the Reader in Suspense?
How Does Edgar Allan Poe Misguide the Reader in His Story “The Black Cat”?
How Does Edgar Allan Poe Use Dreams to Portray Terror and Mirror the Narrator’s Sense of Reality?
How Does Edgar Allan Poe Create Horror in “The Pit and the Pendulum”?
How Edgar Allan Poe Defines American Literature?
How Edgar Allan Poe Explores Similarities Between Love and Hate in His Work?
How Did Edgar Allan Poe & Jack London Deal With Death in Selected Short Stories?
How Edgar Allan Poe’s Work Is Affected by His Predecessors?
How Edgar Allan Poe’s Writings Illuminate His Upbringing?
Was Edgar Allan Poe a Jingleman?
What Influenced Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Style?
What Makes Edgar Allan Poe So Great?
Who Was Edgar Allan Poe?
Who Was William Wilson in the Work of Edgar Allan Poe?
Why Does Edgar Allan Poe Favors Death and Terror Over Other Literary Genres?
Edgar Allan Poe: Crazy Drunk or Brilliant Literalist?
Edgar Allan Poe: Strange Dreamer or True Genius?
What Were Edgar Allan Poe’s Last Five Words?
What Is Edgar Allan Poe Most Famous For?
What Does Edgar Allan Poe Suffer From?
Why Did Edgar Allan Poe Write about Death?
What Are Five Interesting Facts about Edgar Allan Poe?
Why Did Edgar Allan Poe Marry His 13-Year-Old Cousin?
Did Edgar Allan Poe Write With a Cat on His Shoulder?
What Is Edgar Allan Poe’s Most Famous Poem?
What Is the Meaning of Poe’s “The Raven”?
What Language Did Edgar Allan Poe Use to Create Atmosphere and Suspense?
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The Essays, Sketches and Lectures of Edgar Allan Poe
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Edmund C. Stedman and George E. Woodberry (Chicago: Stone and Kimball, 1894-1895 — The essays are collected in volume 7 and Eureka will be found in volume 9) The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by James A. Harrison (New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1902 — The essays are collected in volume 14 and ...
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe's stature as a major figure in world literature is primarily based on his ingenious and profound short stories, poems, and critical theories, which established a highly influential rationale for the short form in both poetry and fiction. Regarded in literary histories and handbooks as the architect of the modern short story, Poe was also the principal forerunner of the "art ...
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 7, 1849, Baltimore, Maryland) 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" (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction.
The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe
The Philosophy of Composition. Edgar Allan Poe was an editor, journalist, poet, literary critic, and short story writer. Known for his gothic tales and psychological dramas, his stories include "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Tell-Tale Heart.". In 1845 he published The Raven and Other Poems.
The Poetic Principle
The Poetic Principle. " The Poetic Principle " is an essay by Edgar Allan Poe, written near the end of his life and published posthumously in 1850, the year after his death. It is a work of literary criticism, in which Poe presents his literary theory. It is based on a series of lectures Poe had given late in his lifetime.
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Philosophy of
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) 'The Philosophy of Composition' is an 1846 essay by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). Although he wrote the essay in order to explain how he came to write his hugely successful poem 'The Raven', it has become a key non-fiction work - probably the key work - produced by Poe, and an important document in helping us to understand his approach to ...
Poe, Edgar Allan
Early Poetry. Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on 19 January 1809, the son of the itinerant actors David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold, both of whom died when he was still an infant.He was brought up by the Richmond tobacco merchant John Allan, with whom he had a difficult relationship.Educated in London and then, for a brief period, at the University of Virginia, Poe entered the U.S. Army in ...
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (né Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic who 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 and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of American literature.
The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
Essays and criticism on Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven - The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe ... British inspiration for "The Raven" has long been taken for granted. Poe read and reviewed (in 1841) ...
The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
Essays and criticism on Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher - The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe ... Looking back to a radiant past (in an "olden / Time long ago ...
The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe
In 1847 after a long illness, Virginia died, and three years later Poe died at the age of forty under mysterious circumstances. ... Carlson, Eric W. Critical Essays on Edgar Allan Poe.
Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's Stories
The variety of Edgar Allan Poe's short fiction cannot be conveyed fully in a short introduction. Though he is best known for his classics of gothic horror such as The Fall of the House of Usher and his portraits of madmen and grotesques such as The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado, he is also the author of detective stories, The Purloined Letter; science fiction, The Narrative of ...
Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career Essay (Biography)
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, and playwright. He was born in January 19, 1809 and died in October 7, 1849 (Burlingame 6). Edgar was among the pioneers of creative writing in America. He was proficient in writing short stories and contributed in developing detective fiction style.
The Best Edgar Allan Poe Poems Everyone Should Read
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was a pioneer of the short story form, but he was also an accomplished poet. Below, we've selected ten of Poe's very best poems and offered a short introduction to each of them. ' The Raven '. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—.
Edgar Allan Poe: Biography, Writer, Poet
Edgar Allan Poe was born Edgar Poe on January 19, 1809, in Boston. ... Poe continued to work in different forms, examining his own methodology and writing in general in several essays, including ...
The Cask of Amontillado: About Edgar Allan Poe
The often tragic circumstances of Poe's life haunt his writings. His father disappeared not long after the child's birth, and, at the age of three, Poe watched his mother die of tuberculosis. Poe then went to live with John and Frances Allan, wealthy theatergoers who knew his parents, both actors, from the Richmond, Virginia, stage.
Edgar Allan Poe American Literature Analysis
Essays and criticism on Edgar Allan Poe, including the works "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado ...
Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Philosophy of Composition'
However, Edgar Allan Poe, it seems, would categorically denounce this approach. In 1846, Poe's now-famous essay, 'The Philosophy of Composition,' was published in Graham's Magazine. In this piece, Poe eschews the very idea of artistic intuition being of any importance to the writing process. He implies that writing must be carried out ...
Essays and reviews : Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849
Essays and reviews ... Essays and reviews by Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849. Publication date 1984 Publisher New York, N.Y. : Literary Classics of the U.S. : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by the Viking Press Collection inlibrary; printdisabled; trent_university; internetarchivebooks
Edgar Allan Poe Essay
Long Essay on Edgar Allan Poe 500 Words in English. Long Essay on Edgar Allan Poe is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10. Edgar Alan Poe was born in Boston and one of the most influential American writers of the 19th century. He was the first author in the world who tried to make a living by his writing skills. He lived a life filled with ...
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe Essay
In the short story Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe portrays a dark story of horrid and calculated revenge. Poe is known to be a master of using words and literary elements to create the necessary environment necessary for the story and deriving emotional reactions from the reader. In this story, Poe manipulates point of view and setting as ...
Edgar Allan Poe: Brief Biography
Life Overview. Edgar Allan Poe is an American poet, prosaist, and literary critic. Born into a Boston family of actors at the beginning of the 19 th century, he became an orphan at a young age and was taken in by a successful merchant household. Throughout his life, Poe went through the conflict with his adoptive father, military service, his brother's death, and a long period of financial ...
The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe
Essays and criticism on Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado - The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe ... There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third ...
113 Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Samples
113 Edgar Allan Poe Essay Topics & Examples. Updated: Feb 27th, 2024. 14 min. In case you're searching for Edgar Allan Poe research paper topics to write about his life, death, and legacy, check the list. Our team has gathered ideas on the author and gothic literature below. We will write.