Poe’s character is the most complex which has yet appeared among American writers, and his genius is the most elusive and individual. He fills a very considerable place in our literary development, and yet, in important aspects of his career, he seems to have been entirely detached from it. His genius is no longer questioned, nor is his influence; and yet his impress on the spiritual life of the country is hardly perceptible. Concerning no other American man of Letters has there been such a consensus of critical opinion abroad; concerning no other native poet, save Whitman, have there been such radical differences of opinion at home.

He holds a secure place among American writers, but he is in no sense a representative writer: His character and career were deeply affected by the conditions of the time in which he lived; but one looks in vain for any vital expression of the life of his time in his prose or verse. In his criticism, it is true, there is the reflection and imprint of the literary conditions amid which he lived; but his criticism, although temporarily significant and important, was the product of his analytical skill and insight, not of his genius. He is, within narrow limits, as true an artist as Hawthorne, and, at times, the master of a spell which Hawthorne did not command; and yet he has left a larger legacy of secondclass work behind him than any other American writer of his class.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Ligeia Silence - A Fable

The Masque of the Red Death

The Assignation

The Cask of Amontillado

The Pit and the Pendulum

William Wilson

A Descent Into the Maelstrom

The Gold-Bug

The Murders in the Rue Morgue