Short Fiction

About the book

About Short Fiction

<p><a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe">Edgar Allan Poe</a> is one of the primary figures of American nineteenth-century literature. His writing was heavily influenced by Romanticism ideals of emotion and feeling, and although mostly known for his Gothic-tinged horror, his tales jump between many different genres, including science-fiction, satire, humor, mystery, and even early detective fiction.</p> <p>Poe mostly wrote short stories and poems, published in magazines and periodicals like the <i>Southern Literary Messenger</i> and <i>Graham’s Magazine</i>, although he also turned his hand to essays and novels (including <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe/the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket"><i>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket</i></a>). He was one of the first American writers to pursue writing as a career, but was better received in France than in his native country. He struggled to make ends meet and resorted to work as a literary critic. His reputation suffered a further blow after his unfortunately early death in 1849 at the age of 40, when a rival not only wrote an extremely unflattering obituary, but bought the rights to his work and published a compilation with a hit piece for an introduction. This undeserved reputation took many decades to fade, but didn’t hinder praise from other notable authors including <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/arthur-conan-doyle">Arthur Conan Doyle</a> and <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-p-lovecraft"><abbr>H. P.</abbr> Lovecraft</a>.</p> <p>Collected here are all of Poe’s short fiction stories, in order of their original magazine publication. Notable stories include “The Gold-Bug,” “The Black Cat,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and many more.</p>

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