Orphaned, expelled and permanently broke, Poe invented the detective story, the modern horror story and a theory of poetry in a short, furious life. He was a sharp critic who made enemies easily and a stylist who could make a single room unbearable.
He designed terror as an engineering problem: every effect calculated from the first sentence.
The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe · 1845
The poem engineered, beat by beat, to get inside your head.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe · 1839
A house, a brother, a sister, and a crack down the middle of everything.
The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe · 1843
A murderer explains, calmly, why he is not mad.
The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe · 1842
A prince locks the plague out and holds a party in colour-coded rooms.
The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe · 1846
A man takes his enemy down to the cellar to taste a wine that does not exist.
The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe · 1843
A man who loves animals becomes the thing he most fears.