Engaged in the revelry and oblivious to the danger, the Red Death personified arrives and, naturally, wreaks havoc, death and destruction upon the party-goers by silently moving from room to room. The Masque of the Red Deathĭuring a highly contagious epidemic known as ‘the Red Death’ which is ravaging the poor in the countryside, the arrogant, callous Prince Prospero and his friends throw a lavish masquerade ball inside his castle. In the time since, the trope of the decaying, morbid house reflecting the inhabitants’ secrets has been commonly repeated by many horror writers and filmmakers. However, the main character is the house itself, which is host to dark family secrets such as incest, and eventually goes on to literally collapse in the final moments of the story.Įvery image, action and word is dedicated to creating an atmosphere of dread and impending doom. This short story concerns the narrator, his childhood friend and his friend’s twin. Image Credit: Byam Shaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 1842 The Fall of the House of Usher Illustration by Byam Shaw for a London edition dated 1909 with caption ‘The sailor’s face flushed up he started to his feet and grasped his cudgel’ The moment Dupin questions the sailor about the murders. The pacy and even humorous tale is therefore celebrated as the first modern detective story, since it introduces the staple detective story conventions of the private investigator, separate to the police, who uses logic to solve crimes. Dupin solves the brutal murders of two women by using his powers of deduction, an innovative storytelling model which inspired characters such as Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. Auguste Dupin, with the two others being The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842-3) and The Purloined Letter (1844). Published in Graham’s Magazine, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is the first of three detective stories that feature super detective C. The revised version of the poem contains the lines, ‘the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome’, which have been described by Poe biographer Jeffrey Meyers as ‘two of Poe’s finest and most famous lines.’ 1841 The Murders in the Rue Morgue It is thought that he wrote the poem for Jane Stanard, the mother of one of Poe’s childhood friends, who was one of the first people to encourage him to write at a time when Poe’s foster father was trying to persuade him against it. Particularly notable for being one of his early works, the poem addresses Helen of Troy, who was said to be the most beautiful woman in the classical world. Poe while he was still in his early twenties, though he made a few changes to the poem in 1845. Poe composed and published this poem in Poems of Edgar A. Here’s a selection of some of Edgar Allan Poe’s most significant works. As a result, Poe’s work is particularly notable for not relying upon monsters or creatures to convey horror elements: instead, his speakers are themselves madmen, stalkers, outcasts and detectives who explore the often terrifying limits of human behaviour. However, he was also plagued by personal and professional tragedies such as the death of beloved women around him, whose likenesses appear in poems such as Annabel Lee (1849). Poe’s work garnered him success in his lifetime. Indeed, Poe’s most famous work The Raven (1845) grasps for that which is out of reach, as a distraught lover is visited by a talking Raven which goes on to psychologically torment him. Poe, who has been described as the ‘Father of American Gothic, Detective Fiction and the Short Story’, was masterful at creating an unrivalled atmosphere of horror. This notion of searching for the unknown and examining humans at their psychological limits encompasses much of what Poe was searching for through his writing, which is known for being mysterious, macabre and often terrifying. American short-story writer, poet, critic and editor Edgar Allen Poe’s (1809-1849) famous poem A Dream Within a Dream (1849) contains the famous line, ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream’.
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