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Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October
7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor and critic and
one of the leaders of the American Romantics. He is best known for his
tales of the macabre and his poems, as well as being one of the early
practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of Gothic novels and
detective fiction, as well as crime fiction in the United States. Poe
died at the age of 40, the cause of his death a final mystery. His exact
burial location is also a source of controversy.
****
The life of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, the son of actress Eliza Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. His
father left before he was born, and his mother died when he was only
three, so Poe was taken into the home of John Allan, a successful
tobacco merchant in Richmond, Virginia. Although his middle name is
often misspelled as "Allen," it is actually "Allan" after this family.).
After attending the Misses Duborg boarding school in London and Manor
School in Stoke Newington, London, UK, Poe moved back to Richmond,
Virginia with the Allans in 1820. Poe registered at the University of
Virginia in 1826, but only stayed there for one year. He was estranged
from his adopted father at some point in this period over gambling debts
Poe had acquired while trying to get more spending money, and so Poe
enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private using the name Edgar A. Perry on
May 26, 1827. That same year, he released his first book, Tamarlane and
Other Poems. After serving for two years and attaining the rank of
Sergeant-major, Poe was discharged. In 1829, Poe's adoptive mother
Frances Allan died and he published his second book, Al Aaraf. As per
his adoptive mother's deathwish, Poe reconciled with his foster father,
who coordinated an appointment for him to the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point. His time at West Point was ill-fated, however, as Poe
apparently deliberately disobeyed orders and was dismissed. After that,
his adoptive father repudiated him until his death in March 27, 1843.
Poe next moved to Baltimore, Maryland with
his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. Poe used
fiction writing as a means of supporting himself, and with in December
1835, Poe began editing the Southern Literary Messenger for Thomas W.
White in Richmond. Poe held this position until January, 1837. During
this time, Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, in
Richmond on May 16, 1836.
After spending fifteen fruitless months in
New York, Poe moved to Philadelphia. Shortly after he arrived, his
novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was published and widely
reviewed. In the summer of 1839, he became assistant editor of Burton's
Gentleman's Magazine. He published a large number of articles, stories,
and reviews, enhancing the reputation as a trenchant critic that he had
established at the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1839, the collection
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes.
Though not a financial success, it was a milestone in the history of
American literature. Poe left Burton's after about a year and found a
position as assistant editor at Graham's Magazine.
It was the first sign of the tuberculosis
that would make her an invalid and eventually take her life. Poe began
to drink more heavily under the stress of Virginia's illness. He left
Graham's and attempted to find a new position, for a time angling for a
government post. He returned to New York, where he worked briefly at the
Evening Mirror before becoming editor of the Broadway Journal. There he
became involved in a noisy public feud with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
On January 29, 1845, his poem "The Raven" appeared in the Evening Mirror
and became a popular sensation.
The Broadway Journal failed in 1846. Poe
moved to a cottage in the Bronx. The cottage is on the south east corner
of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road and is open to the public.
Virginia died there in 1847. Increasingly unstable after his wife's
death, Poe attempted to court the poet Sarah Helen Whitman. Their
engagement failed, purportedly because of Poe's drinking and erratic
behavior; however there is also strong evidence that Miss Whitman's
mother intervened and did much to derail their relationship. According
to Poe's own account, he attempted suicide during this period by
overdosing on laudanum. He then returned to Richmond and resumed a
relationship with a childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster, who, by
that time, was a widow.
Death
On October 7, 1849 Poe was found on the
streets of Baltimore, delirious and "in great distress, and... in need
of immediate assistance," according to the man who found him. He was
taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died early on the
morning of October 7. Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how
he came to be in his dire condition, and wearing clothes that were not
his own. Some sources say Poe's final words were "It's all over now;
write Eddy is no more." (referring to his tombstone). Others say his
last words were "Lord, help my poor soul."
The precise cause of Poe's death is
disputed. Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, an acquaintance of Poe who was among
those who saw him in his last days, was convinced that Poe's death was a
result of drunkenness, and did a great deal to popularize this
interpretation of the events. He was, however, a supporter of the
temperance movement who found Poe a useful example in his work; later
scholars have shown that his account of Poe's death distorts facts to
support his theory.
Dr. John Moran, the physician who attended
Poe, stated in his own 1885 account that "Edgar Allan Poe did not die
under the effect of any intoxicant, nor was the smell of liquor upon his
breath or person." This was, however, only one of several sometimes
contradictory accounts of Poe's last days he published over the years,
so his testimony cannot be considered entirely reliable.
Numerous other theories have been proposed
over the years, including several forms of rare brain disease, diabetes,
various types of enzyme deficiency, syphilis, the idea that Poe was
shanghaied, drugged, and used as a pawn in a ballot-box-stuffing scam
during the election that was held on the day he was found, and more
recently, rabies.
In the absence of contemporary
documentation (all surviving accounts are either incomplete or published
years after the event; even Poe's death certificate, if one was ever
made out, has been lost), it is likely that the truth of Poe's death
will never be known. No other major American writer in the nineteenth
century except Sidney Lanier and Stephen Crane lived a shorter life
span.
Poe is buried on the grounds of Westminster
Hall and Burying Ground, now part of the University of Maryland School
of Law in Baltimore.
Even after death, however, Poe has created
controversy and mystery. Because of his fame, school children collected
money for a new burial spot closer to the front gate. He was reburied on
October 1, 1875. A celebration was held at the dedication of the new
tomb on November 17, 1875. Likely unknown to the reburial crew, however,
the headstones on all the graves, previously facing to the east, were
turned to face the West Gate in 1864. Therefore, as it was described in
a seemingly fitting turn of events:
In digging on what they erroneously thought
to be the right of the General [Poe] the committee naturally first
struck old Mrs. Poe who had been buried thirty-six years before Edgar's
mother-in-law; they tried again and presumably struck Mrs. Clemm who had
been buried in 1876 only four years earlier. Henry's [Poe's brother]
foot stone, it there, was respected for they obviously skipped over him
and settled for the next body, which was on the Mosher lot. Because of
the excellent condition of the teeth, he would certainly seem to have
been the remains of Philip Mosher Jr, of the Maryland Militia, age 19.
Since Poe's death, his grave site has
become a popular tourist attraction. Beginning in 1949, the grave has
been visited every year by a mystery man, known endearingly as the Poe
Toaster, in the early hours of Poe's birthday, January 19th. It has been
reported that a man draped in black with a silver-tipped cane, kneels at
the grave for a toast of Martel cognac and leaves the half-full bottle
and three red roses. The three red roses supposedly are in memory of Poe
himself, his mother and his wife Virginia.
"Memoir" - Griswold's biography of Edgar
Allan Poe
The day Edgar Allan Poe was buried, a long
obituary appeared in the New York Tribune signed "Ludwig". The piece
began, "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before
yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved
by it." It was reprinted in numerous papers across the country. "Ludwig"
was soon identified as Rufus Griswold, a minor editor and anthologist
who had borne a grudge against Poe since 1842, when Poe wrote a review
of one of Griswold's anthologies, a review that Griswold deemed to be
full of false praise. Though they were coolly polite in person, an
enmity developed between the two men as they clashed over various
matters. Critics see Griswold's obituary as using Poe's death as his way
to settle the score.
Griswold went on to assume the role of
Poe's literary executor, though no evidence exists that Poe had ever
made the choice. He convinced Poe's destitute mother-in-law Maria Clemm
to hand over a mass of letters and manuscripts (which were never
returned) and allow him to prepare an edition of Poe's collected works.
Griswold assured Clemm that she would receive significant royalties, but
she received nothing but a few sets of the edition, which she had to
sell herself to make any sort of profit.
Rufus Griswold wrote a biographical
"Memoir" of Poe, which he included in an additional volume of the
collected works. Griswold depicted Poe as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled
madman. This biography presented a starkly different version of Poe's
biography than any other at the time, and included items now believed to
have been forged by Griswold to bolster his case. Griswold's book was
denounced by those who knew Edgar Allan Poe well; Griswold's account
became a popularly accepted one, however, in part because it was the
only full biography available and was widely reprinted, and in part
because it seemed to accord with the narrative voice Poe used in much of
his fiction.
No accurate biography of Poe appeared until
John Ingram's of 1875. By then, however, Griswold's depiction of Poe was
entrenched in the mind of the public, not only in America but around the
world. Griswold's madman image of Poe is still existent in the modern
perceptions of the man himself.
Literary and artistic theory
In his essay "The Poetic Principle" Poe
argued that there is no such thing as a long poem, since the ultimate
purpose of art is aesthetic, that is, its purpose is the effect it has
on its audience, and this effect can only be maintained for a brief
period of time (the time it takes to read a lyric poem, or watch a drama
performed, or view a painting, etc.) He argued that an epic, if it has
any value at all, must be actually a series of smaller pieces, each
geared towards a single effect or sentiment, which "elevates the soul."
Poe associated the aesthetic aspect of art
with pure ideality, claiming that the mood or sentiment created by a
work of art elevates the soul, and is thus a spiritual experience. In
many of his short stories, artistically inclined characters (especially
Roderick Usher from "The Fall of the House of Usher") are able to
achieve this ideal aesthetic through fixation, and often exhibit
obsessive personalities and reclusive tendencies. "The Oval Portrait"
also examines fixation, but in this case the object of fixation is
itself a work of art.
He championed art for art's sake (before
the term itself was coined). He was consequentially an opponent of
didacticism, arguing in his literary criticisms that the role of moral
or ethical instruction lies outside the realm of poetry and art, which
should only focus on the production of a beautiful work of art. He
criticized James Russell Lowell in a review for being excessively
didactic and moralistic in his writings, and argued often that a poem
should be written "for a poem's sake."
He was a proponent and supporter of
magazine literature, and felt that short stories, or "tales" as they
were called in the early nineteenth century, which were usually
considered "vulgar" or "low art" along with the magazines that published
them, were legitimate artforms on par with the novel or epic poem. His
insistence on the artistic value of the short story was influential in
the short story's rise to prominence in later generations.
Poe also focused the theme of each of his
short stories on one human characteristic. In The Tell-Tale Heart he
focused on guilt, in The Fall of the House of Usher his focus was fear,
etc. He also once said how “allegory is an inferior form of literature,
because it is designed to evoke interest in both the narrative and
abstract ideas for which the story stands for and distracts the reader
from the singleness effect”.
Legacy and lore
Poe's works have had a broad influence on
American and World literature (sometimes even despite those who tried to
resist it), and even on the art world beyond literature. The scope of
Poe's impact on art is evident when one sees the many and diverse
artists who were directly and profoundly influenced by him.
Detective Fiction
He is often credited as being an originator
the genre of detective fiction with his three stories about Auguste
Dupin, the most famous of which is "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." (Poe
also wrote a satirical detective story called "Thou Art the Man") There
is no doubt that he inspired mystery writers who came after him,
particularly Arthur Conan Doyle in his series of stories featuring
Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was once quoted as saying, "Each [of Poe's
detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has
developed.... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the
breath of life into it?" (Poe Encyclopaedia 103). Though Poe's Auguste
Dupin was not the first detective in fiction, he became an archetype for
all subsequent detectives.
The Mystery Writers of America have named
their awards for excellence in the genre the "Edgars."
Science Fiction, Gothic Fiction and Horror
Fiction
Poe also profoundly influenced the
development of early science fiction author Jules Verne, who discussed
Poe in his essay Poe et ses œuvres and also wrote a sequel to Poe's
novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket called The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Le sphinx des glaces (Poe Encyclopaedia
364). H. G. Wells, in discussing the construction of his classics of
science fiction, The War of the Worlds and The First Men in the Moon,
noted that "Pym tells what a very intelligent mind could imagine about
the south polar region a century ago" (Poe Encyclopaedia 372). Renowned
science fiction author Ray Bradbury has also professed a love for Poe.
He often draws upon Poe in his stories and mentions Poe by name in
several stories. His book The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short
stories about the colonization of Mars in the future, features a story
titled "Usher II" about an eccentric who constructs a house based on
Poe's tale "The Fall of the House of Usher". The story contains a strong
anti-censorship message under the premise that in the dystopian future,
the works of Poe (and some other authors) have been censored.
Along with Mary Shelley, Poe is regarded as
the foremost proponent of the Gothic strain in literary Romanticism.
Death, decay and madness were an obsession for Poe. His curious and
often nightmarish work greatly influenced the horror and fantasy genres,
and the horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft claimed to have been
profoundly influenced by Poe's works. Another writer profoundly
influenced by Poe is Detroit-born horror author Thomas Ligotti; his
unconventional characters, desolate locations, and morbid outlook have
distinct shades of both Poe and an early Lovecraft.
Physics and Cosmology
Eureka, an essay written in 1848, included
a cosmological theory very similar to the Big Bang theory that
anticipated the Big Bang theory by eighty years, as well as the first
plausible solution to Olbers' paradox. Though described as a "prose
poem" by Poe, who wished it to be considered as art, this work is a
remarkable scientific and mystical essay unlike any of his other works.
He wrote what he considered Eureka to be his career masterpiece.
Poe eschewed the scientific method in his
Eureka. He argued instead that he was reasoning from pure intuition,
using neither the Aristotelian a priori method of axioms and syllogisms,
nor the empirical method of modern science set forth by Francis Bacon.
For this reason he considered it a work of art, not science, but
insisted that it was still true. Though some of his assertions have
later proven to be false (such as his assertion that gravity must be the
strongest force--it is actually the weakest) others have been shown to
be surprisingly accurate and decades ahead of their time.
Cryptography
Poe had a keen interest in the field of
cryptography, as exemplified in his short story "The Gold-Bug". In
particular he placed a notice of his abilities in the Philadelphia paper
Alexander's Weekly (Express) Messenger, inviting submissions of ciphers,
which he proceeded to solve. His success created a public stir for some
months. He later wrote essays on methods of cryptography which proved
useful in deciphering the German codes employed during World War I.
Poe's success in cryptography relied not so
much on his knowledge of that field (his method was limited to the
simple substitution cryptogram), as on his knowledge of the magazine and
newspaper culture. His keen analytical abilities, which were so evident
in his detective stories, allowed him to see that the general public was
largely ignorant of the methods by which a simple substitution
cryptogram can be solved, and he used this to his advantage. The
sensation Poe created with his cryptography stunt played a major role in
popularizing cryptograms in newspapers and magazines.
American Short Story Writers and Poets
Poe's literary reputation was greater
abroad than in the United States, perhaps as a result of America's
general revulsion towards the macabre. Rufus Griswold's defamatory
reminiscences did little to commend Poe to U.S. literary society.
However, American authors as diverse as Walt Whitman, H. P. Lovecraft,
William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor (who, however, claimed the influence
of Poe on her works was "something I'd rather not think about" (Poe
Encyclopaedia 259)), and Herman Melville were influenced by Poe's works.
T. S. Eliot, who was quite hostile to Poe, conceded that "it is
impossible, however, to know if even one's own works were not influenced
by his."
Influence on French Literature
In France, where he is commonly known as
"Edgar Poe," Charles Baudelaire translated his stories and several of
the poems into French. His excellent translations meant that Poe enjoyed
a vogue among avant-garde writers in France while being ignored in his
native land. Poe also exerted a powerful influence over Baudelaire's own
poetry, as can be seen from Baudelaire's obsession with macabre imagery,
morbid themes, musical verse and aesthetic pleasure. In his most famous
work, Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire lists Poe as one of the authors whom
he plagiarized. Baudelaire also found in Poe an example of what he saw
as the destructive elements of bourgeois society. Poe himself was
critical of democracy and capitalism (in his story "Mellonta Tauta" Poe
proclaims that "democracy is a very admirable form of government—for
dogs."), and the tragic poverty and misery of Poe's biography seemed, to
Baudelaire, to be the ultimate example of how the bourgeoisie destroys
genius and originality.
Poe was much admired, also, by the school
of Symbolism. Stéphane Mallarmé dedicated several poems to him and
translated some of Poe's works into French, accompanied by illustrations
by Manet (see below). The later authors Paul Valéry and Marcel Proust
were great admirers of Poe, the latter saying "Poe sought to arrive at
the beautiful through evocation and an elimination of moral motives in
his art." From France, writers like Algernon Swinburne caught the
Poe-bug, and Swinburne's musical verse owes much to Poe's technique.
Other World Literature Influenced by Poe
Poe's poetry was translated into Russian by
the Symbolist poet Konstantin Bal'mont and enjoyed great popularity
there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, influencing
artists such as Nabokov, who makes several references to Poe's work in
his most famous novel, Lolita. Fyodor Dostoevsky called Poe "an
enormously talented writer" and many of his characters, such as
Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment are derived
from Poe characters (in this case, Montresor from "The Cask of
Amontillado" (this is debatable: Raskolnikov is constantly in doubt and
trying to justify his actions to himself, while the chilling effect of
Montresor's narration lies precisely in the character's calm certainty
of his purpose) and Auguste Dupin from "Murders in the Rue Morgue") (Poe
Encyclopaedia 102). He wrote favorable reviews of Poe's detective
stories and briefly references "The Raven" in his novel, The Brothers
Karamazov. Poe was also an influence for the Swedish poet and author
Viktor Rydberg, who translated a considerable amount of Poe's work into
Swedish; a Japanese author who even took a pseudonym, Edogawa Rampo,
from a rendering of Poe's name in that language; and German author
Thomas Mann, in whose novel Buddenbrooks, a character reads Poe's short
novels and professes to be influenced by his works.
Franz Kafka, who was from Czechoslovakia,
once said of Poe, "He was a poor devil who had no defenses against the
world. So he fled into drunkenness. Imagination served him only as a
crutch. He wrote tales of mystery to make himself at home in the world.
That's perfectly natural. Imagination has fewer pitfalls than
reality...I know his way of escape and his dreamer's face." Poe made a
deep impression on Kafka and the influence of Poe's works on his are
undeniable. Both authors focus on disturbed states of mind and the
crimes or horrors that arrive from them. Also, they both used
closed-off, isolated settings to explore their characters (though while
Poe usually chooses exotic settings, such as the catacombs beneath an
Italian palazzo or an abandoned mansion in the Appenines, Kafka tends
more often to choose settings of urban blight, such as a stuffy
apartment or the attics of housing projects.)
Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges was a
great admirer of Poe's works, and translated his stories into Spanish.
Many of the characters from Borges' stories are borrowed directly from
Poe's stories, and in many of his stories Poe is mentioned by name.
Music
In the music world, Lou Reed, Joseph
Holbrooke, Claude Debussy and Sergei Rachmaninoff composed musical works
based on the works of Poe. Holbrooke composed a symphonic poem based on
The Raven. Debussy often declared Poe's profound effect on his music
(Poe Encyclopedia 93) and began operas based on The Fall of the House of
Usher and The Devil in the Belfry, though he did not finish them.
Rachmaninoff transformed "The Bells" into a choral symphony. (Three
other orchestral works based on Poe, along with the Rachmaninoff, were
featured in a concert given by the American Symphony Orchestra in
October 1999 .) Lou Reed released a 2 CD concept album called The Raven
in 2003 featuring a number of musical and spoken word interpretations,
with guest appeareance from various actors including Steve Buscemi and
Willem Dafoe.
Visual Arts
In the world of visual arts, Gustave Doré
and Édouard Manet composed several illustrations for Poe's works.
Playwrights and Filmmakers
On the stage, the great dramatist George
Bernard Shaw was greatly influenced by Poe's literary criticism, calling
Poe "the greatest journalistic critic of his time" (Poe Encyclopaedia
315). Oscar Wilde called Poe "this marvellous lord of rhythmic
expression" and drew on Poe's works for his novel The Picture of Dorian
Gray and his short stories (Poe Encyclopedia 375). Alfred Hitchcock
declared Poe as one of his inspirations, saying "It's because I liked
Edgar Allan Poe's stories so much that I began to make suspense films."
Actor John Astin, who performed as Gomez in the Addams Family television
series, is an ardent admirer of Poe, and in recent years has starred in
a one man play based on Poe's life and works, entitled Edgar Allan Poe:
Once Upon a Midnight. The play is lent a degree of realism by the fact
that Astin more than slightly resembles Poe in appearance. Astin also
wrote an essay on Poe's prose poem Eureka and has said of Poe, "I feel
that Poe, through his own tortured existence, gained deep insight into
the nature of the universe, along with an intense love and appreciation
for life itself. Through this play I want to share that impression with
others."
Literary Criticism
In recent years the poet and critic W. H.
Auden has revitalized interest in Poe's works, especially his critical
works. Auden said of Poe, "His portraits of abnormal or self-destructive
states contributed much to Dostoyevsky, his ratiocinating hero is the
ancestor of Sherlock Holmes and his many successors, his tales of the
future lead to H. G. Wells, his adventure stories to Jules Verne and
Robert Louis Stevenson." (Poe Encyclopaedia 27).
Pop Culture
His legacy is abundant in modern pop
culture. It is much alive in the city of Baltimore. Even though Poe
spent less than two years there, he is now treated like he had been a
native son. In 1996, when NFL football arrived, the team took the name
Baltimore Ravens, in honor of his best known tale. The team's three
"winged" mascots were named Edgar, Allan, and Poe. The television show
Homicide: Life on the Street, set in Baltimore, made reference to Poe
and his works in several episodes. Poe figured most prominently in an
episode in which a Poe-obsessed killer walls up his victim in the
basement of a house to imitate the grisly murder of Fortunado by
Montressor in "The Cask of Amontillado". In a disturbing scene near the
end of the episode, the killer reads from the works of Poe as a dramatic
effect to increase the tension.
But Poe's vast influence over pop culture
does not end with Baltimore. Poe's image, with his weary expression,
piercing eyes and tangled hair (see the daguerrotype above), has become
a cultural icon for the troubled genius. His face adorns the bottlecaps
of Raven Beer, the covers of numerous books on American literature as a
whole, and is often stereotyped in cartoons as "the creepy guy". In
1967, Poe appeared as part of the backdrop crowd of the Beatles'
immensely popular album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. Besides
the Beatles, numerous popular movie makers and rock stars have
incorporated Poe or Poe's works into their works (see "Adaptations"
below).
Preserved home
Edgar Allan Poe, his wife Virginia, and his
mother-in-law Maria rented several homes in Philadelphia, but only the
last house has survived.
That Spring Garden home (where the author
lived in 1843-44) is today preserved by the National Park Service as a
memorial to one of our most influential and fascinating American
authors.
Notable works
Wikisource has original works written by or
about:
Edgar Allan Poe
Poems
A Dream (1827) (Full Text at Wikisource)
A Dream Within a Dream (1827) (Full Text at
Wikisource)
Dreams (1827) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Tamerlane (1827) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Al Aaraaf (1829) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Alone (1830) (Full Text at Wikisource)
To Helen (1831) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Israfel (1831) (Full Text at Wikisource)
The City in the Sea (1831) (Full Text at
Wikisource)
To One in Paradise (1834) (Full Text at
Wikisource)
The Conqueror Worm (1837) (Full Text at
Wikisource)
Silence (1840) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Lenore (1843) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Dreamland (1844) (Full Text at Wikisource)
The Raven (1845) (Full Text at Wikisource;
audio at LibriVox)
Ulalume (1847) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Eureka (1848) a prose poem.
Annabel Lee (1849) (Full Text at
Wikisource)
The Bells (1849) (Full Text at Wikisource)
Eldorado (1849)
Short Stories
Berenice (1835)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) (Full
text at Wikisource)
William Wilson (1839) (Full Text at
Wikisource)
The Masque of the Red Death (1842) (Full
Text at Wikisource)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) (Full text
at Wikisource)
The Gold Bug (1843) (Full text at
Wikisource)
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) (Full text at
Wikisource)
The Spectacles (1844) (Full text at
Wikisource)
The Balloon-Hoax (1844) (Full text at
Wikisource)
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)
(Full text at Wikisource)
Some Words with a Mummy (1845) (Full text
at Wikisource)
The Cask of Amontillado (1846) (Full text
at Wikisource)
The Light-House (unfinished, published
posthumously in 1909 and 1942)
Ligeia (1838)
The Black Cat (1843)
The Imp of the Perverse (1845)
The Premature Burial (1844)
MS. Found in a Bottle (1833)
The Thousand-And-Second Tale of
Scheherazade
A Tale of Jerusalem
The Oblong Box
A Descent into the Maelström
Hop-Frog
The Auguste Dupin stories
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) (Full
text at Wikisource)
The Mystery of Marie Roget (1843) (Full
text at Wikisource)
The Purloined Letter (1844) (Full text at
Wikisource)
Longer Works
The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans
Pfall (1835)
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of
Nantucket (novel) (1838)
Essays
Maelzel's Chess-Player (1836)
The Philosophy of Composition (1846)
The Rationale of Verse
The Poetic Principle (Posthumously
published, 1850)
Eureka: An Essay on the Material and
Spiritual Universe (1848) (also known as Eureka: A Prose Poem)
Play
Politian (fragment, 1835) (Scenes Full Text
at Wikisource)
Adaptations
Several of Poe's works were made into
movies, notably a series of movies directed by Roger Corman and starring
Vincent Price. The 1993 film The Mummy Lives, starring Tony Curtis,
screenplay by Nelson Gidding, was suggested by Poe's Some Words with a
Mummy (1845).
Vincent Price collaborated with actor Basil
Rathbone on a collection of their readings of Poe's stories and poems.
Author Ray Bradbury is a great admirer of
Poe, and has either featured Poe as a character or alluded to Poe's
stories in many of his works.
In 1976, The Alan Parsons Project produced
a record album entitled Tales of Mystery and Imagination, based on
several of Poe's tales. The album also features Orson Welles as the
narrator in the instrumental opening track Dream within a dream. More
recently, Eric Woolfson has written and produced a stage musical
entitled Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination that has run in
England.
Robert R. McCammon wrote Ushers Passing, a
sequel to Fall of the House of Usher, published in 1984
Writer Stephen Marlowe adapted the strange
details of Poe's death into his 1995 novel The Lighthouse at the End of
the World.
In 1995 several of Poe's stories were
combined to make an interactive novel stylised as a video game called
The Dark Eye.
A double-CD organized by Hal Willner,
"Closed On Account of Rabies" with poems and tales of Poe performed by
artists as diverse as Christopher Walken, Marianne Faithfull, Iggy Pop
and Jeff Buckley was issued in 1997.
In 2003, Lou Reed released a double-CD set
titled "The Raven" after Poe's poem.
Peter Hammill has written and recorded an
operatic version of "The Fall of the House of Usher."
Elysian Fields has been known to perform
some of his work in song form.
Heavy metal band Iron Maiden recorded a
song titled "Murders in the Rue Morgue" for their second album,
"Killers."
Heavy metal band Grave Digger released an
album in 2001 entitled "The Grave Digger". All twelve songs are based
fully on Poe's works.
The song "Tomb of Ligeia" by the band Team
Sleep is based on Poe's story Ligeia.
German based band Diorama recorded a song
Her Liquid Arms in 2001, for the same album, which starts with a spoken
sample of the end of The Tell-Tale Heart
"The Black Cat" was translated to giallo
film as Eye of the Black Cat (a.k.a. Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only
I have the Key)
Rock band Finch recorded a song titled "The
Casket of Roderick Usher" as a continuation of Poe's "The Fall of the
House of Usher" on their 2005 album "Say Hello To Sunshine."
Poe as a character
When It Was Moonlight, a short story by
Manly Wade Wellman appeared in the Feb 1940 issue of Unknown
Child of Night (1975) by Anne Edwards
Evermore (1978) a novel by Barbara Steward
Poe Must Die (1978) a novel by Marc Olden
The Man Who Was Poe (1989) a juvenile novel
by Avi
The Black Throne (1990) a novel by Roger
Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen
The Phantom comic strip (2000) written by
Tony De Paul and drawn by César Spadari
Danza macabra (1964) horror film directed
by Antonio Margheriti; Poe is played by Silvano Sorrente.
Nella stretta morsa del ragno (1971) horror
film directed by Antonio Margheriti; Poe is played by Klaus Kinski.
Nevermore (1999) a novel by Harold
Schechter
The Hum Bug (2001) a novel by Harold
Schechter
The Mask of Red Death (2004) a novel by
Harold Schechter
Edgar Allan Poe: Once Upon a Midnight,
starring John Astin as Poe.
Notes
^ Poe's Middle Name. The Edgar Allan Poe
Society of Baltimore
^ Benitez, R. Michael (Sep. 24, 1996).
Edgar Allan Poe Mystery. University of Maryland Medical News
^ Baltimore Sun article about Westminster
Hall.
^ UM School of Law homepage.
^ To read Griswold's full obituary, see
Edgar Allan Poe obituary at Wikisource.
^ Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. American
Symphony Orchestra
^ Baltimore-Washington Beer Works
^ See "Poe and popular culture" by Mark
Neimeyer, (2002). Discussion of the modern presentation of Edgar Allan
Poe found in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: University
Press; Cambridge, UK. ISBN 0521793262
General references
The Poe Encyclopedia by Frederick S. Frank
and Anthony Magistrale. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut and
London, (1997) ISBN 0313277680
Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, three
volumes (I and II Tales and Sketches, III Poems), edited by Olive
Mabbott, The Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, London, England, 1978
Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Walter
J. Black Inc, New York, (1927)
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