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Author
1809–1849
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809 and died in Baltimore in 1849, aged forty. Orphaned when he was very young, he lived almost always short of money, writing reviews, poems and stories for magazines.
In those stories he invented, almost without meaning to, an entire genre. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, from 1841, introduces C. Auguste Dupin, an amateur who solves an impossible crime by reasoning alone: he is the direct ancestor of Sherlock Holmes. The Gold-Bug, from 1843, combines a coded message with the hunt for a pirate's treasure. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, from 1845, is one of his most unsettling tales.
Poe believed a story should be read at a single sitting and produce a single effect. That is why his tales are short, intense and hard to forget, perfect for discovering one night, with the lights low.
Edgar Allan Poe
In a shadowy Paris, the eccentric C. Auguste Dupin takes on the savage killing of two women in a room locked from within, where every witness heard something different. Brief and gripping, this is the tale that invented the detective story, a sharp exercise in reasoning wrapped in an eerie, gothic mood.
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Edgar Allan Poe
On an island off South Carolina, William Legrand grows fixated on a strange golden beetle, and his old friend begins to wonder whether he has lost his mind. The whim turns into a hunt for pirate treasure led by a coded message. A short tale that moves from eerie night-time mood to the pure pleasure of watching a puzzle being cracked.
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Edgar Allan Poe
A mesmerist sets out to learn what happens when a man is hypnotised at the very moment of death. Poe tells it in the cool voice of a scientific report, so convincing that many readers in 1845 took it as fact. A short tale that moves with measured composure toward a chill that lingers.
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