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The following brief summaries are designed to quickly give readers an idea of what each story is about. Find
something of interest then take a trip into Poe's imagination...
Summaries are listed in alphabetical order:
Yes, Poe actually wrote a few comedies. Of course, he had a weird sense of humor. In this story, the narrator meets a strange little character and they go off to have adventures. When reading the broken dialog in this story, it helps if you pretend to read it like a drunk person.
This story appeared in the New York Sun in 1844 and claimed to have details about a group of men that successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a new type of balloon. Although it looked like a real story, it was completely ficticious, created entirely from Poe's imagination.
This is a really creepy story with a gruesome ending. I don't want to give too much away. If you like horror stories, read this one. You'll shudder after you finish it...
"There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low..."
A drunk man kills his cat and it comes back to haunt him. In Poe's usual style, the narrator of the story is the killer and we see things through his eyes. Quite a horrific tale.
The narrator in this story vows revenge upon a man named Fortunato. He takes advantage of Fortunato's ego and lures him down into the recesses of an underground vault to taste a rare wine, a cask of Amontillado.
"He had a weak point --this Fortunato --although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine."
Three fisherman are at sea, off the coast of Norway. They encounter a hurricane and must fight for their lives while trying to avoid the Maelstrom, a huge whirlpool that sucks down anything in its path. Can these men survive the hurricane and escape the force of the Maelstrom?
"A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky as clear as I ever saw and of a deep bright blue and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up every thing about us with the greatest distinctness but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up !"
A beautiful love story. In many ways, it parallels Poe's life and his love for his wife, Virginia. The question is, who does the person at the end of the story represent?
A man dying from tuberculosis asks his friend, the narrator of the story, to hypnotize him just before death. The event is witnessed by two doctors and a medical student. The results are interesting to say the least.
One of the most widely read of Poe's stories. The narrator receives a desperate letter from a "boyhood friend" requesting that he come to see him. The friend, a mister Roderick Usher, lives in a very old mansion out near a swamp. Once inside, the narrator finds more than he expected. A classic story of a creepy guy living in a haunted house.
"The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within."
If Poe lived today, he could have been a hacker! In this story, two friends and a servant go on a hunt for the fabled buried treasure of Captain Kidd. Through his character named William Legrand, Poe explains how to decode an encrypted message. Using Poe's technique, you can actually solve cryptograms and substitution ciphers! Besides being a great "Sherlock Holmes" type adventure story, it gives an insight into Poe's intelligence.
Are you looking for a short story about a crippled midget who seeks revenge on those who mistreat him and make fun of him? This is that story. And it was written almost 200 years before Game of Thrones
A great little 5 page story about human nature. The narrator talks about how we can stand on the edge of a cliff, knowing it will be suicide to jump off, yet we wonder what it would be like. There is also a great paragraph about procrastination. Poe's character in this story is a murderer who is fighting the urge to confess his crime.
Another very short piece that isn't really a story but a discussion about music, the nature of God and the universe, and finally, a beautiful and poetic visualization of life and death. "Fay" means fairy, or elf.
Probably my favorite Poe story. The narrator of the story describes his beautiful wife, Ligeia. She was tall and slender with pale skin and long black hair. She dies and he is heartbroken. Some time later he decides to move on with his life and he remarries. Strange things start to happen as the narrator thinks more and more about his first love, Ligeia...
Wait for a rainy night, turn off all the lights and light some candles before you read this story. Poe does such a great job of describing the surroundings in this story, you can easily place yourself there.
A man is sitting in a coffee shop, watching all of the different kinds of people moving through the streets. A particluar old man catches his attention and he decides to follow him to learn more about him...
This story really makes you think. Its a story that you'll want to read several times.
This was the first story Poe received any money for. He entered it in a short story contest and won the prize. The narrator of the story is a passenger on a sailing ship. After several days at sea, they encounter a violent storm. The ship is being torn to pieces by the wind and the waves...
The "Red Death" is a plague which has killed off half of the population. Prince Prospero gathers a thousand people from the knights and royalty. They seal themselves off from the rest of the world in an extensive castle, in an attempt to separate themselves from the horrible conditions on the outside. But, can they escape the Red Death?
After hypnotizing a dying patient, a doctor has a remarkable conversation with him about the nature of the universe, spirits, and God.
Poe invented the detective story with this tale. The main character is C. Auguste Dupin, a sleuth that solves crimes by deduction. Two women have been brutally murdered and it appears there was no way in or out of the room where the murders took place. How does Dupin figure it out? Who killed the women? (They didn't kill each other)
A reporter asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1894 if he had been influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe. The creator of Sherlock Holmes replied, "Oh, immensely! His detective is the best detective in fiction."
Poe's French detective Dupin helps solve another murder. But this time, Poe's tale is based on a REAL murder that took place in the New York area in 1841. Poe changed the names and moved the location to Paris but the details, characters, and quotes from the various publications are all real.
A short comedy, only a few pages long. The first part is a narrative about stories that do not have morals. You almost wonder if Poe is talking about himself. The narrator describes his friend Toby Dammit whose favorite phrase is, "I'll bet the Devil my head!" As the story continues, the narrator and his friend Dammit are out for a walk in the country. They come to an old covered bridge and as they are crossing it, a strange little man appears...
An artist boards a ship with his new bride, his two sisters, and a mysterious box. The narrator tries his best to figure out what's in the box.
A painter is so obsessed with painting the perfect portrait of his beautiful wife, that he does nothing else until it is finished. As an artist myself, I can relate to this story in more ways than one. It is very short, only a couple of pages, but definitely worth reading.
Another of Poe's more popular works. It's the story of a man's attempt to survive in a torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition, one of the most deadly inquisitions in history. This isn't really a horror story. It's more of a suspenseful thriller. If you had been sentenced to death in a torture chamber, what would you do? and what's in the Pit?
Did you know the Spanish Inquisition ended during Poe's lifetime? We tend to think it happened in the Middle Ages, but torturing people because they wouldn't convert to Christianity officially ended in 1834, when Poe was 25 years old.
Given the title of this story, its already obvious what it's about. It's definitely a scary story. Poe makes you feel like you are there. Read this story carefully because there is also an important lesson to be learned.
"It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs- the stifling fumes from the damp earththe clinging to the death garmentsthe rigid embrace of the narrow housethe blackness of the absolute Nightthe silence like a sea that overwhelms..."
Purloined simply means stolen. A document of national importance has been stolen and the police can't find it or prove who stole it. Poe's character, C. Auguste Dupin, comes to the rescue, solves the crime and recovers the letter. It's great to read how the police go through all of their usual methods and are unsuccessful. Dupin comes along and figures it all out using the powers of deduction as his only weapon. Its like "CSI: Edgar Allan Poe".
A short piece, only a couple of pages long, it is more like a dream than a story with real characters. It is full of symbolism and rich imagery. Very deep, very intense. I'd like to know what Poe was thinking when he wrote this. Was he trippin? Maybe he had been drinking Absinthe?
An ancient egyptian mummy comes to life, but not to chase anyone around a tomb. This is a science fiction story, not a tale of horror. If you look carefully, you'll find a little sarcastic humor here and there. The mummy has a story of his own to tell, and its quite an interesting one, to say the least. Another example of Poe's fantastic imagination.
This is another of Poe's few comedies but it's a great one. The narrator of the story is a young man who is in love with an aristocratic woman. The story is about his pursuit of her and ends with a surprise.
This is not a horror story. It's a strange and surprising little tale about a visit to an insane asylum. The narrator, traveling through the french countryside, decides to stop at a well known private "mad house". He has heard from his medical friends in Paris that this hospital uses a new technique to care for its patients. The cast of characters that Poe invents for this story is wonderful.
The narrator of this story tells you his "perfect" plan to kill an old man, then takes you through the process of doing it. He might get away with it too except he starts hearing things...
"I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall."
The narrator of this story, who calls himself William Wilson, describes the events of his early life in school and the rivalry between himself and another person named William Wilson. As the story progresses, we learn of many similarities between the two Wilsons. Are they twin brothers? or something else?
