Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe is among the earliest American practitioners of the short story. He is known for his writings about gothic horror, fear, pain and death. Poe was in appearance a quiet and shy looking man. His work is mainly worth reading because it keeps readers engaged and on the edge of their seats. During Poe's time there were various factors that could have contributed to the genre of his writings.
Poe, who is regarded as the inventor of the detective-fiction genre, has only one complete novel on his credit, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and majority of his works are short stories and poems. His novel was the story of a whaling ship which turned into a tale of murder, rebellion, and cannibalism. The story of the novel was not very much different from the rest of his works. Though majority of his writings were depressing, dark, dreary, and mysterious, he also wrote humor stories and hoaxes.
Illustration for "The Black Cat" by Aubrey Beardsl...
1848 Daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe at 39, a yea...
English: Photo of Edgar Allan Poe's Monument/Grave...Poe was born a poet. The mind of this poet was embossed with the impress of genius. Poe is, perhaps, the most original author that ever existed in the United States. Enjoying in the wild and visionary, Poe's mind penetrates the innermost recesses of the human soul, creating enormous and wonderful dreams, eloquent fancies and dreadful mysteries.
Poe's "Sonnet - To Science", which is called his lament over the dangers of scientific development, address its object from a point of view firmly anchored within the Romantic movement, comparing science's keen-eyed examination to a vulture whose wings cast a shadow of tedious reality upon the landscape of the imagination. It asks how the poet, having revealed such a predator, can possibly love the scientific disclosure or concede its wisdom. It is only natural, the sonnet proposed, that...