The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher.

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. “The Purloined Letter.” Entries for the individual stories are located elsewhere on Goodreads. There are three stories in the series: 1. Auguste Dupin short stories under the above title. Librarian's note: this entry is for a collection of C. Today, the unique Dupin stories still stand out as utterly engrossing page-turners. Decades later, Dorothy Sayers would describe “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” as “almost a complete manual of detective theory and practice.” Indeed, Poe’s short Dupin mysteries inspired the creation of countless literary sleuths, among them Sherlock Holmes. Introducing to literature the concept of applying reason to solving crime, these tales brought Poe fame and fortune, although much less of the second during his lifetime. Between 18, Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre of detective fiction with three mesmerizing stories about a young and eccentric French private detective named C.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe