This week, we are celebrating the work of Edgar Allan Poe, which inspired our May Book of the Month – Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin. Yesterday, we told you about Poe’s short story of the same name, but today we want to highlight his other short stories.
Poe wrote dozens of short stories in his time, though some are notably more famous than others. Here’s a bit more about some of his most well-known stories:
A drunk man kills his cat and it comes back to haunt him. In Poe’s usual style, the narrator of the story is the killer and we see things through his eyes. Quite a horrific tale.
The narrator in this story vows revenge upon a man named Fortunato. He takes advantage of Fortunato’s ego and lures him down into the recesses of an underground vault to taste a rare wine, a cask of Amontillado.
“He had a weak point –this Fortunato –although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine.”
“The Fall of the House of Usher”
One of the most widely read of Poe’s stories. The narrator receives a desperate letter from a “boyhood friend” requesting that he come to see him. The friend, a mister Roderick Usher, lives in a very old mansion out near a swamp. Once inside, the narrator finds more than he expected. A classic story of a creepy guy living in a haunted house.
“The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within.”
Another of Poe’s more popular works. It’s the story of a man’s attempt to survive in a torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition, one of the most deadly inquisitions in history. This isn’t really a horror story. It’s more of a suspenseful thriller. If you had been sentenced to death in a torture chamber, what would you do? and what’s in the Pit?
Purloined simply means stolen. A document of national importance has been stolen and the police can’t find it or prove who stole it. Poe’s character, C. Auguste Dupin, comes to the rescue, solves the crime and recovers the letter. It’s great to read how the police go through all of their usual methods and are unsuccessful. Dupin comes along and figures it all out using the powers of deduction as his only weapon. Its like “CSI: Edgar Allan Poe”.
The narrator of this story tells you his “perfect” plan to kill an old man, then takes you through the process of doing it. He might get away with it too except he starts hearing things…
“I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; — just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.”
Here’s a look at the rest of Poe’s short stories. His work is all in the public domain, and therefore is available for free online:
- “The Angel of the Odd”
- “The Balloon Hoax”
- “Berenice”
- “A Descent Into The Maelström”
- “Eleonora”
- “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”
- “The Gold Bug”
- “Hop-Frog”
- “The Imp of the Perverse”
- “The Island of the Fay”
- “Ligeia”
- “The Man of the Crowd”
- “Manuscript Found in a Bottle”
- “Mesmeric Revelation”
- “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
- “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”
- “The Oval Portrait”
- “The Premature Burial”
- “Silence – A Fable”
- “Some Words With a Mummy”
- “The Spectacles”
- “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether”
- “William Wilson”
For the comments: Which of Poe’s short stories have you read? Which is your favorite?
Novel Novice 
We discussed The Cask of Amontillado in our English class. It was one of my favorite classic short stories of all time. I like the element of “unreliable narrator” in the story.
-Ivan
Rumpelstiltskin and Co.
I read The Tell-Tale Heart in class when I was in high school. My teacher even showed us a video clip of The Simpsons reenacting the poem. Very interesting, indeed!