First published in a 1842 edition of Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, The Masque of the Red Death tells the story of Prince Prospero as he tries to avoid a plague by confining himself and his nobles to a masquerade in an abbey. Often considered a gothic allegory, the story reflects on not only life and death but also the illusion of control.

First published in a 1841 edition of Graham's Magazine, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is often cited as the first modern detective story. The first of three stories to center around C. Auguste Dupin, Poe's fictional detective, The Murders in the Rue Morgue involves Dupin's investigation of two women's murders. Establishing many of the tropes that would later become common to detective fiction, the story begins with an explanation of Dupin's theory...

The unnamed narrator describes the qualities of Ligeia, a beautiful, passionate and intellectual woman, raven-haired and dark-eyed, that he thinks he remembers meeting "in some large, old decaying city near the Rhine." He is unable to recall anything about the history of Ligeia, including her family's name, but remembers her beautiful appearance. Her beauty, however, is not conventional. He describes her as emaciated, with some "strangeness." He describes...

The story opens with the narrator recounting a summer sea voyage from aboard the ship 'Independence'. The narrator learns that his old college friend Cornelius Wyatt is aboard with his wife and two sisters, though he has reserved three state-rooms. After conjecturing the extra room was for a servant or extra baggage, he learns his friend has brought on board an oblong pine box: "It was about six feet in length by two and a half in breadth." The narrator...

"Shadow" is a short parable by Edgar Allan Poe. It starts like a monologue from someone who has died recently: "YE who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few...

This 1900 collection features Poe's only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, a remarkable work of disturbing gothic fiction which influenced science fiction's development as well as the work of Jules Verne and Herman Melville. The tale follows a young boy, Pym, and his friend, Augustus, as they witness such harrowing events as mutiny and cannibalism. Among the fifteen short stories in this edition are "The Devil in the Belfry" and...

The plot involves a man wrongfully accused of murdering his uncle Barnabas Shuttleworthy, whose corpse is missing. An unnamed narrator finds the body, suspects the victim's good friend Charles Goodfellow, and sets up an elaborate plot to expose him. The corpse appears to come back to life and points to the best friend, exclaiming "Thou art the man!" The title and the climactic line refer to the second Book of Samuel in the Bible.

"The Landscape Garden" also published under the title "The Domain of Arnheim" combines the essay form with that of the tale in an effort to improve on nature. Critics have praised the story as a marvellous prose poem that contains a musical element similar to that which Poe attempted to achieve in hie poetry.

The narrator explains at length his theory on which he believes causes people to commit acts against their self-interest. This essay-like discussion is presented objectively, though the narrator admits that he is "one of the many uncounted victims of the "Imp of the Perverse". He then explains how his conviction for murder was the result of this. The narrator murders a man using a candle that emits a poisonous vapor. The victim enjoyed reading in...

The scenario of this work is atypical for Poe. The narrator begins his tale by commenting that "the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone." Only then, he states, can its "spiritual uses" be fully appreciated. "But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality--and perhaps only one--which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced...