The Stories and Poems

of Edgar Allan Poe

1
Table of Contents

The Stories
and Poems of
Edgar Allan Poe

About the Book.................................................... 3

About the Author ................................................. 5
“I would give the
Historical and Literary Context .............................. 7 world to embody
Other Works/Adaptations ..................................... 8
one half the ideas
Discussion Questions............................................ 9
Additional Resources .......................................... 10
afloat in my
Credits .............................................................. 11 imagination.”

Preface
Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective story, perfected the
horror tale, and first articulated the theory of the modern
short story as well as the idea of pure poetry. A hero of
Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and Nabokov, Poe has never been
entirely respectable to American critics because of his twin What is the NEA Big Read?
“faults”: being too eccentric, and too popular among A program of the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA Big
common readers. Read broadens our understanding of our world, our
It’s time to say the obvious. No author stays internationally communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a
popular for 150 years by accident. Poe is one of the classic good book. Managed by Arts Midwest, this initiative offers
authors of American literature—a master of the short story, grants to support innovative community reading programs
a magician of the short poem, and a critic of brilliance and designed around a single book.
originality. And no small part of his artistic sleight of hand is
that he appeals to readers from childhood to old age. Let us A great book combines enrichment with enchantment. It
underestimate him nevermore! awakens our imagination and enlarges our humanity. It can
offer harrowing insights that somehow console and comfort
us. Whether you’re a regular reader already or making up
for lost time, thank you for joining the NEA Big Read.

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About the Book
Introduction to Poe’s influence is almost too universal to notice. He
resembles scarcely anybody before him but, at least a little,
the Book almost everyone after. If he hadn’t come along to make
Few writers have pioneered so American literature safe for ghosts and murderers, for crime-
many forms of escapism as solving know-it-alls and their quarry—for the subconscious
Edgar Allan Poe, and fewer still mind, in all its murk and madness—somebody else might
have sought escape so have. But, to use one of Poe’s signature italicized endings,
desperately themselves. Poe’s what if nobody had?
claustrophobic life consisted of
one escape attempt after Poe’s Fiction
another, most of them Throughout Poe’s fiction, there runs an undercurrent of
unsuccessful. Again and again inwardness, an obsession with dark corners of the
he dodged poverty through subconscious mind, at the time familiar perhaps only from
overwork, but never for long. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). He also used a fiction
He fled loneliness into an ill- writer’s entire bag of tricks—exclamation points, double-
fated, loving but likely chaste dashes, italics, repetition, the capitalization of first letters
marriage to a frail cousin. And drink promised an oblivion and sometimes of entire words—to pump up the urgency of
that kept luring him back, with increasingly destructive his gothic stories. If melodramatic organ chords could talk,
consequences. they would sound like the narrator of a Poe story.
Poe’s most satisfying escape was into his writing, where Few students of Poe can resist the temptation to group his
generations of readers have followed him ever since. His stories into subsets, like teams. Some might say there’s the
sheer versatility continues to astonish. Without Poe, the claustrophobia team, captained by the “The Cask of
literary arts of horror, adventure, detective, and science Amontillado,” in which the narrator bricks up his friend in a
fiction—and, arguably, the short story itself—would have wine cellar. Then there’s the idealized-women team,
developed very differently. In addition to fiction in several anchored by “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
genres, he wrote as famous a poem as American literature with its female characters either doomed, impossibly perfect,
can claim. He practiced literary criticism as fine art, blood or both. Then there’s the junior detective team, consisting
sport, and, with a series of female poets, the highest form of mainly of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and its two
flirtation. If the movies had existed in the nineteenth sequels, in which Poe essentially invented detective fiction.
century, he might have written screenplays as well—and
What these categories all have in common is the self-
bedeviled his producers as reliably as he did most of his
dramatizing loneliness of genius. Poe almost always relies on
editors.
a first-person narrator. All his stories are ultimately
At the same time, another side of Poe remained relentlessly claustrophobia stories, whether they include a literally
logical. In his criticism as well as his detective stories, he confined space, a roomier but still airless and solitary house,
could make a case and prove it with mathematical or the psychological prison of a damaged character’s mind.
inevitability. Often lost in any study of Poe, too, is his sense Poe’s treatment of women characters also reflects his
of humor. Though their victims would hardly have agreed, essential solitude. Many of his narrators marry, but none
his hoaxes, essays, and especially his negative reviews ever achieves a lasting connection with his bride. Even his
retain their wit even today. Even the most macabre of his most self-satisfied character, the peerless amateur detective
stories impart a certain ghoulish tickle. C. Auguste Dupin, has but one friend and no equal. We don’t
see the suffering this causes, but only the shallowest
character would fail to feel it.
No serious writer today could get away with all this
hyperventilating. Yet few writers can fully escape
Poe’s gravitational pull as one of the original two masters of
the American short story. The other would be Nathaniel
Hawthorne, who, interestingly, also wrote more than a few
horror stories. Like many fledgling writers, American fiction
itself started out with a fascination for ghosts and gore.

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Poe’s Poetry Poe devoted his longest essay on poetics, “The Rationale of
Verse,” to an overly complicated view of rhythm and meter,
Edgar Allan Poe began his literary career as a poet, was a but the importance of sound in Poe’s poems cannot be
merciless critic, and found his greatest success with “The overstated. A master of rhythm, Poe’s syllable-by-syllable
Raven.” Poe defined poetry as “the rhythmical creation of approach to sound yielded some of the most memorable
beauty.” He had strong and serious ideas as to what lines in American poetry. His ear for mimicry is unparalleled.
qualified as “poetry,” and what fell short. “The Bells” is an onomatopoetic marathon of tinkling
Poe wrote several variable essays on poetics—the best is tintinnabulation and clanging, banging bells, bells, bells
“The Poetic Principle”—through which his ideas evolved, but throughout.
remained fairly consistent. In “The Philosophy of Excluding “The Raven,” Poe’s poems are mostly short lyric
Composition,” Poe outlines how he came to write “The pieces—meditations on death or beautiful women or the
Raven,” detailing his artistic choices. Scholars have pointed death of beautiful women—almost always less than a page
out that Poe’s account of writing the poem is vastly idealized long. He believed that a poem should be readable in one
and probably untrue, but however disingenuous Poe is about sitting and objected to what he saw as the epic “mania”
his composition, he’s crystal clear on his philosophy: “Beauty among such contemporaries as Longfellow, whom he felt
is the sole legitimate province of the poem.... Melancholy is valued Truth and moral didacticism over the exaltation of
thus the most legitimate of all poetical tones....The death, Beauty.
then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most
poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond doubt For all the time he spent writing about it, Poe left behind a
that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a rather slim corpus of poetry. Perhaps because his standards
bereaved lover.” were so high, a remarkable share of Poe’s poems are
excellent in their technique and unity. His poems remain
The death of a beautiful woman is the theme that dominates popular in and outside the classroom, and are assured a
the best of Poe’s poems. There is “the lost Lenore” of “The place in the minds of readers forevermore.
Raven,” but also Lenore of the poem “Lenore”—Poe thought
that the sound or was the most beautiful in the English
language. His other famous poem to lost love, “Annabel Lee”
tragically ends when he lies down by the side of his “life”
and his “bride” “in the sepulcher there by the sea, / In her
tomb by the sounding sea.”

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About the Author
Edgar Allan Poe In 1842 Virginia ruptured a blood vessel, the first sign of the
ill health that plagued her short life. To cope with her illness
(1809-1849)
and the stress of his failing finances, Poe occasionally turned
Edgar Poe was born in 1809 to alcohol. He repented after each binge, but his employers
in Boston to David and and friends took note. In 1845, Poe published “The Raven,”
Elizabeth Poe. David was the which brought him temporary popular and critical acclaim.
son of a Revolutionary War Always prone to self-destructive behavior, Poe attacked
hero and a drinker; Elizabeth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on grounds of plagiarism,
a popular stage actress. Soon greatly damaging his own reputation.
after Edgar’s birth, David Poe
left the family, and in Two years later, Virginia died of tuberculosis. Poe’s own
December of 1811, Poe’s death followed just two years after that. The cause of his
mother died. Two-year-old death remains uncertain.
Edgar was taken in by John
Allan, a wealthy Richmond Edgar Allan Poe, 1848 The Death of Edgar Allan Poe
tobacco merchant, who lent (Courtesy of the Poe Museum,
Richmond, Virginia) On October 3, 1849, Poe was found at Ryan’s 4th Ward
Poe his middle name. Polls, a tavern also known as Gunner’s Hall, in Baltimore,
disoriented and wearing tattered clothing. He was admitted
Poe spent a single year at the University of Virginia. After
to Washington College Hospital, where he never regained
John Allan refused to pay his second-year tuition, and
full consciousness and died four days later.
gambling debts kept him from paying his own way, Poe
joined the army. He did well there and, when his enlistment His death was attributed to “congestion of the brain,”
was up, attended West Point for officer training. He was though no autopsy was performed. Due to conflicting
soon expelled for failing to attend class and skipping testimonies from his doctor and a libelous obituary written
mandatory chapel services. He settled in Baltimore with his by his literary nemesis Rufus Griswold, the nature of Poe’s
paternal aunt Maria Clemm and her eight-year-old daughter, death has remained in question. Doctors and scholars have
Virginia, Poe’s future wife. theorized that Poe died of epilepsy, hypoglycemia, beating,
rabies, alcohol, heart failure, murder, or carbon monoxide
Poe became a regular contributor to the Southern Literary
poisoning. One of the most compelling scenarios is that Poe,
Messenger, publishing not just stories but scathing book
found on election day, was a victim of “cooping,” a form of
reviews that earned him the nickname “tomahawk man.”
voter fraud in which a person is dressed up, beaten,
Poe, Virginia, and Maria Clemm moved to Richmond, where
drugged, and forced to vote multiple times—the term is
Poe then took the reins as editor of the Messenger. The next
related to a “chicken coop,” as victims were often held
year, Poe, 27, and Virginia, 13, married.
captive in a small space while abused. Not one of these
Poe resigned from the Messenger in 1837 over a salary theories has been proven, and Poe’s death remains a
disagreement and moved the family to New York where mystery.
financial troubles continued to haunt him. He met with some
success in 1840, when he released Tales of the Grotesque
and Arabesque, including all his stories up to that point.

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Poe’s Houses Poe the Critic
The Poe Museum In his day, Poe was known for his poison pen, but a few
Richmond, Virginia contemporaries did earn his admiration.
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist
Poe was raised in Richmond by the Allan family. He moved
(1804-1864)
back in 1835 to work for the Southern Literary Messenger.
Most of the landmarks and houses from Poe’s time in  Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet
Richmond have been lost to history, but Richmond’s Poe (1806-1861)
Museum offers a collection of his manuscripts and artifacts.
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet
www.poemuseum.org (1809-1892)
 Charles Dickens, English novelist
(1812-1870)
The Baltimore Poe House and Museum
 James Russell Lowell, American poet
Baltimore, Maryland
(1819-1891)
Poe moved to Baltimore to live with his future wife, Virginia,
and her mother. There Poe published poems and short
stories and won his first literary contest, with “Ms. Found in
Poe’s Admirers
a Bottle.” He lived at what is now the Baltimore Poe House
and Museum from about 1831 to 1835. “Your ‘Raven’ has produced a sensation, a ‘fit horror,’ here in
England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and
www.eapoe.org some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the
‘Nevermore,’ and one acquaintance of mine who has the
misfortune of possessing a ‘Bust of Pallas’ never can bear to
Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
look at it in the twilight.”
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poe lived in Philadelphia for six years, where he wrote and
published some of his most influential work, including “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Gold-Bug.” For the “You might call him ‘the leader of the Cult of the Unusual.’”
last year or so of his time in the city (c. 1842–1844), he —Jules Verne
lived with his wife and mother-in-law at what is now the
Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, maintained by the
National Park Service. “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the
http://www.nps.gov/edal/ breath of life into it?”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage

“It would also be just to say that Poe sacrificed his life to his
Fordham, Bronx, New York
work, his human destiny to immortality.”
From 1846 to 1849, Edgar Allan Poe lived in the hills of the —Jorge Luis Borges
Bronx, New York. Here, his young wife died and Poe wrote
some of his most lyrical work, such as “Annabel Lee” and
“The Bells.” The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage is now preserved “It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I
by The Bronx County Historical Society. began to make suspense films.”
www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/poecottage.html —Alfred Hitchcock

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Historical and Literary Context
The Life and Times 1830s
of Edgar Allan Poe
 1836: Poe marries his cousin, Virginia Clemm.

 1837: A tightening of foreign credit, which had helped

1800s finance American projects including the Erie Canal,
creates a financial panic and leads to a five-year
 1801: Alexander Hamilton founds the New York depression.
Evening Post, heralding a decade in which the number
of U.S. newspapers roughly doubles.  1838: Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym of Nantucket, is published.
 1803: With the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas
Jefferson’s administration buys from France all or part 1840s
of what will become fifteen states.
 1845: Poe finds success but not solvency with “The
 1809: Edgar Poe born in Boston, January 19. Raven.”

 1809: Abraham Lincoln born less than a month later,  1847: Virginia dies from complications of tuberculosis,
on February 12. leaving Poe even more desolate.

1810s  1849: Poe dies under mysterious circumstances in

Baltimore on October 7.
 1811: Abandoned by her husband, Poe’s mother dies.

 1815: Napoleon’s France is defeated at Waterloo.

 1815–1820: Poe lives with the family of his guardian,

John Allan, in Great Britain.

 1819: Jefferson founds the University of Virginia

1820s

 1825: The Erie Canal is completed, opening the Great

Lakes to seagoing Atlantic commerce for the first
time.

 1826: American Temperance Society founded.

 1827: Poe publishes his first volume of poetry and

joins the Army.

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Other Works/Adaptations
Poe’s Long Shadow the oddest stab at setting Poe to music has
been POEtry (2000), a theater piece and song cycle of
Poe has influenced generations of successful detective, selected Poe work by Lou Reed and Robert Wilson, which
horror, and psychological novelists, and sometimes less later became a Reed album called The Raven (2003).
successful adaptors of his own work. Such horror novelists
as H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King owe a freely confessed The stage, too, has taken frequent advantage of Poe’s
debt to him, and Fyodor Dostoevsky and Sir Arthur Conan inherent theatricality. Some of these versions have even
Doyle have likewise noted the enormous effect of his work flourished for a season or more. In the end, though,
on their own. French writers in particular have whether on stage or screen, it’s difficult to make Poe any
acknowledged Poe’s example, and the poet Charles more dramatic than he already is.
Baudelaire remains one of his earliest champions and finest
translators.
Works by Edgar Allan Poe
As with even the best translations of Poe into other  Tamerlane, and Other Poems, 1827
languages, his translations into other media may always fall
 Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, 1829
short of the original. But even the weakest of Poe
adaptations have the virtue of driving us back to the
 Poems, 1831
originals, and artists who in good faith continue to plunder
him for material—unlike most of his characters—need feel
 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of
no guilt. Poe’s short but always visual stories pose particular
Nantucket, 1838
opportunities and challenges for the unwary adaptor. Yet an
admirer can easily put together a midnight, or even an all-
 Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840
night, film festival that does Poe credit, if never quite justice.
Two film versions of “The Fall of the House of Usher” may  The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, 1843
stand in for as many as 200 attempts so far to translate the
author’s work. Remarkably, both “Ushers” have made the  Tales, 1845
Library of Congress’s annual National Film Registry of movies
worthy of preservation. A product of the promising yet sadly  The Raven and Other Poems, 1845
stillborn Rochester, New York, film industry, the 1928
version holds up well for its striking avant-garde approach
and inventive look.
More famously, Roger Corman and Richard
Matheson’s House of Usher (1960), starring Vincent Price,
started a vogue for Poe that indirectly led to the second
golden age of Hollywood. Corman was a journeyman B-
movie director-producer when he discovered in Poe the
perfect opportunity to combine cheesecake with pure
cheese. He hired mellifluous classical ham Vincent Price and
great pulp writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible
Shrinking Man (1957), Duel (1971), “The Twilight Zone”)
and their several resulting Poe adaptations brought out the
best in all three. The money made in the process later
allowed Corman to bankroll low-budget first films by Francis
Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and many of the other
filmmakers who ushered in the American film renaissance of
the 1970s.
Many musical works interpret Poe’s poetry and fiction. These
adaptations include a choral symphony of The Bells by
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1913, rev. 1936), and two operas
based on “The Fall of the House of Usher”: one finished, by
Philip Glass (1987), one not, by Claude Debussy. Perhaps

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Discussion Questions
1. Do the narrators from “The Black Cat” and “The
Cask of Amontillado” deserve what they get? Do the
characters around them? What might this say about
Poe’s view of the world?
2. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” why does Poe
spend nearly two full pages on the lyrics to “The
Haunted Palace,” one of Roderick’s “performances?”
Do Poe’s language and content change from one
form to the other, or just the medium?
3. In “The Pit and the Pendulum,” how does the
narrator’s clever idea of smearing food on the straps
holding him down, so as to induce the hungry rats
to chew him loose, anticipate the climactic
maneuvers of heroes in suspense and action-
adventure stories today?
4. “The Masque of the Red Death” was originally
published as “The Mask of the Red Death.” What is
a “masque,” and do you think the pun was
intentional?
5. Are the narrators of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and
“William Wilson” sane? Do you like the stories better
if they’re hallucinating, or if they aren’t? Why?
6. Read Poe’s essay “Philosophy of Composition,” in
which he details how he came to write “The Raven.”
Do you believe him? Why or why not?
7. Listen closely to the sounds of Poe’s poems
“Annabel Lee” and “The Raven.” How does his use
of sound influence your reading of the poems?
8. Poe’s works are haunted by death. Sometimes even
his speakers are dead. How does this affect the
tone of his work? Does it add suspense or take
away from it?
9. Poe often writes about the death of a beautiful
woman. His own wife was ill for most of their
marriage and died at a young age. How might this
affect the emotional intensity of his writing?

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Additional Resources
Works about Poe Websites
 Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Jackson, MS: University  The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore
Press of Mississippi, 2005. Founded in 1923, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of
 Ostrom, John Ward, ed. The Collected Letters of Baltimore grew out of several smaller organizations
Edgar Allan Poe, 2 vols., 3rd ed. Revised and endeavoring to erect a memorial to Poe at his
expanded by Burton R. Pollin and Jeffrey A. Savoye. gravesite. They have been responsible for the
New York: Gordian Press, 2008. preservation of Poe’s Baltimore home and continue
to honor Poe’s legacy with an annual lecture series
 Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical
and several publications. The society’s
Biography. 1941. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1998. comprehensive website features information and
essays about Poe’s life and work.
 Symons, Julian. The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and
Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Harper & Row, http://www.eapoe.org/
1978.

 The Poe Museum

If you’d like to read more haunting Richmond’s Poe Museum hosts a collection of Poe’s
manuscripts and artifacts from his life. The
fiction, you might enjoy: museum’s website features a brief biography of Poe
 Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll with special attention paid to his time in Richmond,
and Mr. Hyde, 1886 educational resources, and a selection of Poe’s
 Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, 1952 stories and poems.

 Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, 1959 https://www.poemuseum.org/

 Stephen King’s The Shining, 1977

If you’d like to read more detective

fiction, you might enjoy:
 Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, 1860
 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Complete Sherlock
Holmes, 1930
 Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, 1930
 Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient
Express, 1934

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Credits
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Tales & Poems. New York:
Vintage Books, 1975.

---. The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Penguin The National Endowment for the Arts was established by
Classics, 2006. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal
government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $5
billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and
Works Consulted innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities.
The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state
Hecker, William F. ed. Private Perry and Mister Poe: The
arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the
West Point Poems, 1831. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State
philanthropic sector.
University Press, 2005.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Poetry and Tales. New York: Library of

America, 1984.

Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography.

1941. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1998.
Arts Midwest promotes creativity, nurtures cultural
Symons, Julian. The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of leadership, and engages people in meaningful arts
Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. experiences, bringing vitality to Midwest communities and
enriching people’s lives. Based in Minneapolis, Arts Midwest
Wilbur, Richard. “Edgar Allan Poe” and “The Poe Mystery connects the arts to audiences throughout the nine-state
Case.” Responses: Prose Pieces, 1953-1976. New York: region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. One of six non-
profit regional arts organizations in the United States, Arts
Midwest’s history spans more than 30 years.
Acknowledgments
Writers: David Kipen and Dan Brady for the National
Endowment for the Arts

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