The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings

One of the most Gothic short story writers of the nineteenth century, Edgar Allan Poe was a predominant figure of the Romantic movement in American literature and is regarded as the inventor of the detective story. His literary career began with Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827) but it was his deftly plotted short stories which attracted attention. He was also a noticeable literary critic and an unwearying reviewer and essayist. The recurring themes in his works-the death of women, bereavement, horror, madness, premature burial, decay, revival of the dead, life after death-are suggested to have resulted from his own life, which was a sequence of tragic events and frequent abandonments. Poe skillfully weaved these themes into his meticulous plots and created the macabre world of terror and dark romanticism bringing alive the horror through his choice of words. More than a century and a half after Poe's death, his works still remain as fresh and scary, sending a frightening chill down the spines of his readers.