Public domain image of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

A selective list of online literary criticism for poet and story writer Edgar Allan Poe, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites.

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Introduction & Lighter Reading

"From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe." Online exhibition on Edgar Allan Poe from the Harry Ransom Center, U of Texas Austin. Includes games and other educational content for students. The Poe Digital Collection: Original manuscripts, letters, and more.

"The Humbug." Biographical, on Poe's struggle to make a living. New Yorker, 27 April 2009.

"Knowing Poe." Contents: Poe the person; Poe the writer; the Poe library. Maryland Public Television.

A brief introduction to Edgar Allan Poe, from the Academy of American Poets.

Web page on "The Cask of Amontillado," for students, presents the text on one side of the screen and discussion questions on the opposite site. Created by Randy Rambo, English Instructor at Illinois Valley Community College.

Sucur, Slobodan. "Edgar Allan Poe." Literary Encyclopedia, 8 Sept. 2008. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to the poet, from a database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription.

An online exhibition of Edgar Allan Poe's letters, U of Virginia.

Literary Criticism

Berman, Jacob Rama. Domestic Terror and Poe's Arabesque Interior. English Studies in Canada 31 (March 2005).

Brown, Arthur A. "Death and telling in Poe's 'The Imp of the Perverse.'" Studies in Short Fiction, Spring 1994.

Church, Joseph. "'To Make Venus Vanish': Misogyny as Motive in Poe's 'Murders in the Rue Morgue.'" American Transcendental Quarterly 20 (June 2006).

Duquette, Elizabeth. Accounting for value in "The Business Man." Studies in American Fiction, Spring 2007.

Fabre, Michel. "Black Cat and White Cat: Richard Wright's Debt to Edgar Allan Poe," Poe Studies IV (June 1971).

Fisher, Benjamin F. The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe (Cambridge UP, 2008). Publisher's site. Chapter 1, Biography of Poe..

Fisher, Benjamin F. "Dickens and Poe: Pickwick and 'Ligeia,'" Poe Studies VI (June 1973).

Garmon, Gerald M. Emerson's 'Moral Sentiment' and Poe's 'Poetic Sentiment': A Reconsideration," (Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe) Poe Studies VI (June 1973).

Garmon, Gerald M. "Roderick Usher: Portrait of the Madman as Artist," "The Fall of the House of Usher": A Symposium. Poe Studies V (June 1972).

Heller, Terry. The complete text of The Delights of Horror (U of Illinois P 1987). Includes chapters on Poe's "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," chapters on Bram Stoker's Dracula, Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw."

Hoffman, Daniel. "The artist of the beautiful." American Poetry Review 24 (Nov./Dec. 95).

Marovitz, Sanford E. "Poe's Reception of C. W. Webber's Gothic Western, 'Jack Long; or The Shot in the Eye." Poe Studies IV (June 1971).

Marsh, John L. "The Psycho-Sexual Reading of 'The Fall of the House of Usher.'" The Fall of the House of Usher: A Symposium. Poe Studies V (June 1972).

Martindale, Colin. "Archetype and Reality in 'The Fall of the House of Usher,'" "The Fall of the House of Usher": A Symposium. Poe Studies V (June 1972).

May, Leila S. "'Sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature': the brother-sister bond in Poe's 'Fall of the House of Usher.'" Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1993.

Nandrea, Lorri. "Objectless curiosity: Frankenstein, The Station Agent, and other strange narratives." [The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Mary Shelley, Tom McCarthy] Narrative, Oct., 2007.

Phillips, H. Wells. "Poe's Usher: Precursor of Abstract Art," "The Fall of the House of Usher": A Symposium. Poe Studies V (June 1972).

Piacentino, Ed. "Poe's 'The Black Cat' as psychobiography: some reflections on the narratological dynamics," Studies in Short Fiction Spring, 1998.

Pollin, Burton R. "Edgar Allan Poe as a major influence upon Allen Ginsberg," Mississippi Quarterly, Fall 1999.

Robinson, E. Arthur. "Thoreau and the Deathwatch in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart,'" Poe Studies IV (June 1971).

Ross, Donald H. "The Grotesque: A Speculation," Poe Studies IV (June 1971).

Schlutz, Alexander. "Purloined voices: Edgar Allan Poe reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge" [Influence of Coleridge on Poe, Letter to B--, The Purloined Letter, Eureka, Biographia Literaria, The Friend]. Studies in Romanticism, June 2008.

Senelick, Laurence. "Charles Dickens and 'The Tell-Tale Heart.'" Poe Studies VI (June 1973).

St. Armand, Barton Levi. "Poe's 'Sober Mystification': The Uses of Alchemy in 'The Gold-Bug,'" Poe Studies IV (June 1971).

St. Armand, Barton Levi. "Usher Unveiled: Poe and the Metaphysic of Gnosticism" in "The Fall of the House of Usher": A Symposium, Poe Studies V (June 1972).

Thompson, G.R. "The Face in the Pool: Reflections on the Doppelgänger Motif in 'The Fall of the House of Usher,'" "The Fall of the House of Usher": A Symposium in Poe Studies V (June 1972).

Weekes, Karen. "Poe's Feminine Ideal." The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe (Cambridge U P 2002). Covers Annabel Lee and others. Preview at Google Books.

Wetz, Linda L. and S. K Wertz. "On Poe's Use of 'Mystery.'" Poe Studies IV (June 1971).

Zimmerman, Brett. "A Catalogue of Selected Rhetorical Devices Used in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe." Style, Winter 1999.

Teaching & Discussion Guides

A curriculum guide for teachers of Edgar Allan Poe, "Poe Lightly" by Rosemary Hamilton, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

"Detective Fiction for Remedial Readers," a curriculum guide for middle school teachers, by Ruth M. Wilson, focuses on the work of of Edgar Allan Poe and the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

A curriculum guide for middle school teachers, "It’s A Mystery To Me" by Marilyn Gaudioso, provides suggestions for teaching "The Red-Headed League" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe, and "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie. From the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew and Tony Magistrale. Approaches to Teaching Poe's Prose and Poetry (MLA, 2008). Publisher's site. Chapters on teaching Annabel Lee, The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, Hop Frog, The Fall of the House of Usher, Ligeia, The Mask of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, The Premature Burial, Morella, The Raven, Some Words with a Mummy, The Tell-Tale Heart.

Bibliography, Web Sites

A bibliography for studying the science fiction element in Poe's work, by David Ketterer. Science Fiction Studies 1 (1974).

Poe Studies, published by Washington State Univ., has made full-text articles from 1971-1979 freely available at their web site. Over 50 scholarly articles of interest to Poe researchers can be read there, along with reviews of scholarly books. A sample of these articles is indexed here; for additional articles the researcher should browse the journals. Additional articles from the Poe Newsletter, 1968-70.

Removed Articles

Brown, Arthur A. Literature and the Impossibility of Death: Poe's "Berenice," Nineteenth Century Literature, 50 (March 1996) (removed).

Dunbar, Eve. "The Terror of Poe: Slavery, the Southern Gentleman, and the Status Quo," pp. 39-47 in Sachsman, David B (ed.); Rushing, S. Kittrell (ed.); Morris, Roy, Jr. (ed. and introd.); Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Cold Mountain. (Purdue UP 2007)(moved at Google Books).

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