By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Eleonora’ is a short story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). It was first published in an annual titled The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present in 1842. The story is narrated by a man who realises he loves his cousin, Eleonora, with whom he lives in an isolated valley in a forest.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Philosophy of Composition’ is an 1846 essay by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). Although he wrote the essay in order to explain how he came to write his hugely successful poem ‘The Raven’, it has become a key non-fiction work – probably the key work – produced by Poe, and an important document in helping us to understand his approach to writing.
You can read Poe’s ‘The Philosophy of Composition’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of his argument below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an 1839 short story by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), a pioneer of the short story and a writer who arguably unleashed the full psychological potential of the Gothic horror genre. The story concerns the narrator’s visit to a strange mansion owned by his childhood friend, who is behaving increasingly oddly as he and his twin sister dwell within the ‘melancholy’ atmosphere of the house.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘MS. Found in a Bottle’ is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s sea stories, and one of his earliest works of fiction: it was published in 1833, when Poe was still in his early twenties. The story recounts an unnamed narrator’s experiences at sea, following a storm and shipwreck.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the story is the idea that the narrative we are reading was written by a man shortly before he died at sea, and that the narrative miraculously survived at sea in a glass bottle before being found by someone.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Ligeia’ is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1838. Weaving together a number of Poe’s favourite themes and preoccupations, it’s an unsettling and ambiguous tale about love, beauty, death, resurrection, and drugs (yes, we’ll come to that). Poe also considered the story his favourite.