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Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

A selective list of online literary criticism for the nineteenth-century American poet and story writer Edgar Allan Poe, with links to reliable biographical and introductory material and signed, peer-reviewed, and scholarly literary criticism.

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Introduction & Biography [all free]

"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.

An online exhibition of Edgar Allan Poe's letters, U of Virginia. Press release, "U. Va. acquires Rare Poe Letter."

Literary Criticism

Baguley, David. "Guiomar's Poetics of Death in 'The Raven.'" Poe Studies 15 (Dec. 1982) [subscription service].

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

Brown, Arthur A. "Death and telling in Poe's 'The Imp of the Perverse.'" Studies in Short Fiction 31 (Spring 1994) [free].

Brown, Arthur A. "Literature and the Impossibility of Death: Poe's 'Berenice.'" Nineteenth Century Literature 50, 4 (March 1996) [first page of article only].

Cassuto, Leonard. "The Coy Reaper: Unmasque-ing the Red Death" ["Masque of the Red Death"]. Studies in Short Fiction 25, 3 (Summer 1988) [subscription service].

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

Duquette, Elizabeth. "Accounting for value in 'The Business Man.'" Studies in American Fiction 35, 1 (Spring 2007) [free].

Erkkila, Betsy. "The Poetics of Whiteness: Poe and the Racial Imaginary." In Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race (Oxford UP 2001) [subscription service].

Fabre, Michel. "Black Cat and White Cat: Richard Wright's Debt to Edgar Allan Poe." Poe Studies 4 (June 1971) [free].

Fisher, Benjamin F. Publisher's site for The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe (Cambridge UP 2008). The available preview is Chapter 1, a biography of Poe [free].

Fisher, Benjamin F. "Dickens and Poe: Pickwick and 'Ligeia.'" Poe Studies 6 (June 1973) [free].

Freedman, William. "Poe's 'Raven': The Word That Is an Answer 'Nevermore.'" In Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism: History Theory, Interpretation 31, 1 (1998) [subscription service].

Garmon, Gerald M. Emerson's 'Moral Sentiment' and Poe's 'Poetic Sentiment': A Reconsideration" [and Ralph Waldo Emerson]. Poe Studies 6 (June 1973) [free].

Garmon, Gerald M. "Roderick Usher: Portrait of the Madman as Artist." Poe Studies 5 (June 1972) [free].

Heller, Terry. The Delights of Horror. Complete book is open access. 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." (U of Illinois P 1987) [free].

Mabbott, Thomas Ollive. "Lenore," in The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe Vol 1 (1969). The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

Marovitz, Sanford E. "Poe's Reception of C. W. Webber's Gothic Western, 'Jack Long; or The Shot in the Eye." Poe Studies 4 (June 1971) [free].

Marsh, John L. "The Psycho-Sexual Reading of 'The Fall of the House of Usher.'" Poe Studies 5 (June 1972) [free].

Martindale, Colin. "Archetype and Reality in 'The Fall of the House of Usher.'" Poe Studies 5 (June 1972) [free].

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 30, 3 (Summer 1993) [free].

Nandrea, Lorri. "Objectless curiosity: Frankenstein, The Station Agent, and other strange narratives." [The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Mary Shelley, Tom McCarthy]. Narrative, 15, 3 (Oct. 2007) [free].

Phillips, H. Wells. "Poe's Usher: Precursor of Abstract Art." Poe Studies 5 (June 1972) [free].

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

Pollin, Burton R. "Edgar Allan Poe as a major influence upon Allen Ginsberg." Mississippi Quarterly 52 (Fall 1999) [subscription service].

Robinson, E. Arthur. "Thoreau and the Deathwatch in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart.'" Poe Studies 4 (June 1971) [free] .

Ross, Donald H. "The Grotesque: A Speculation." Poe Studies 4 (June 1971) [free].

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 47, 2 (June 2008) [free].

Senelick, Laurence. "Charles Dickens and 'The Tell-Tale Heart.'" Poe Studies 6 (June 1973) [free].

St. Armand, Barton Levi. "Poe's 'Sober Mystification': The Uses of Alchemy in 'The Gold-Bug.'" Poe Studies 4 (June 1971) [free].

St. Armand, Barton Levi. "Usher Unveiled: Poe and the Metaphysic of Gnosticism." Poe Studies 5 (June 1972) [free].

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 [subscription service].

Thompson, G.R. "The Face in the Pool: Reflections on the Doppelgänger Motif in 'The Fall of the House of Usher.'" Poe Studies 5 (June 1972) [free].

Weekes, Karen. "Poe's Feminine Ideal." In The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe (Cambridge U P 2002). On Annabel Lee and others [subscription service].

Wetz, Linda L. and S. K Wertz. "On Poe's Use of 'Mystery.'" Poe Studies 4 (June 1971) [free].

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

Teaching Guides & Web Sites [all free]

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

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

"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. A curriculum guide for middle school teachers, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.

Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew and Tony Magistrale. Publisher's site for Approaches to Teaching Poe's Prose and Poetry. 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. Modern Language Assoc. 2008.

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 U, 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.

The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, extensive material on Poe for the researcher.

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