Further reading as discussed in podcast Episode 22 – Adolescent Behaviour
We reached out to Chris Semtner, Curator of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia USA, for his recommendations on the very best stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
Check out Chris’ comprehensive list (including links to read the works) below!
Poe’s Single Effect
A good place to learn more about Poe’s theory of ‘unity of effect’ is his essay The Philosophy of Composition, in which Poe details how he constructed The Raven to achieve a unified effect. This essay probably best explains his theory and how he puts it to work.
Another piece to read is Poe’s 1847 review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work. It covers some of the same ground as his 1842 review of Hawthorne, which also discusses ‘unity of effect’.
“When you are finished with those and are still looking for something else on the topic, you can try Poe’s book-length essay Eureka, which describes the origin and destiny of the universe as a poem with a single unified effect. The essay gets dry in the middle, but the last part is the best.
Poe’s Best Fiction
| Title | Word count | Chris’ description |
| Never Bet the Devil Your Head | 3,993 | A short story making fun of the Transcendentalists |
| Hop-Frog | 3,611 | An often overlooked revenge tale with hints of an anti-slavery message even though Poe hated didacticism |
| The Cask of Amontillado | 2,338 | Poe’s greatest tale of revenge and probably my favorite of his short stories. I especially like the traces of dark humor like the victim saying, “I shall not die of a cough!” and the murderer responding, “True! True!” |
| William Wilson | 8,042 | Another overlooked tale |
| Berenice | 3,621 | His first horror story |
| King Pest The First – A Tale Containing An Allegory | 4,794 | A comedy so dark that Robert Louis Stevenson said that whoever could write it had “ceased to be human” |
| How to Write a Blackwood Article (The Psyche Zenobia) /A Predicament (The Scythe of Time) | 7,430 | Companion pieces: A parody of the outrageous stories appearing in Edinburgh’s Blackwood’s Magazine |
| A Decided Loss (Loss of Breath) | 6,613 | A comedy about a man who lost his breath |
| The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether | 6,843 | A comedy set in one of his day’s innovative new mental hospitals |
| The Purloined Letter | 7,136 | Poe’s best detective story |
| Thou Art the Man! | 5,809 | Poe’s parody of his own detective stories |
| A Succession of Sundays (Three Sundays in a Week) | 2,522 | A happy little story unlike anything you would expect from Poe |
| The Tell-Tale Heart | 2,152 | Best horror stories |
| The Black Cat | 3,930 | |
| A Descent into the Maelstrom | 7,032 | |
| The Pit and the Pendulum | 6,116 | |
| Mellonta Tauta | 5,564 | Best science fiction stories: set in the year 2848 |
| The Unparalleled Adventure Of One Hans Pfaall | 18,522 | Best science fiction stories: about a trip to the moon in a balloon |
Biographies:
The best biography of Poe to date is Arthur Hobson Quinn’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. It is very thorough and unbiased. It was also written by a university professor in the 1940s and is very dry. You can skip the entire chapter about Poe’s parents.
Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (1992) by Kenneth Silverman is more readable but is strongly biased against Poe to the extent that it uses discredited information and ignores primary sources that refute his theories.
Of the recent biographies, my favorites are A Mystery of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak (an enjoyable exploration of both Poe and his presence in popular culture) and The Reason for the Darkness of the Night by John Tresch (a Poe biography focusing on Poe’s relationship with the science and scientists of his day and how that influenced his writing).
The most thorough biography to date is Richard Kopley’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, which came out earlier this year and utilizes documents that were not available to any previous biographer. Kopley spent years researching this book. Some critics have taken issue with the writing style (‘awkward transitions and numbing repetition,’ according to Louis Bayard in the Washington Post), but there is some good information.