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, […]
Tag: Edgar Allan Poe
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Philosophy of Composition’
‘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 […]
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’
‘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 […]
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘MS. Found in a Bottle’
‘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 […]
A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Ligeia’
‘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.