Edgar Allan Poe - Biography and Works. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), American poet, critic, short story writer, and author of such macabre works as “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1840); I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?
Young Edgar traveled with the Allans to England in 1815 and attended school in Chelsea. Works. The Poe Decoder - "The Raven" Edgar Allan Poe Literary Criticism. Public domain image of Edgar Allan Poe 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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