Edgar Allan Poe (1808-1849) is the father of the mystery story, the inventor of psychological horror, and an early writer of science fiction. His works have inspired countless writers for over a century and a half. Some of these disciples include: Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert Bloch. Add to these knowing admirers the legions of writers who craft short fiction, not knowing that the Man From Baltimore perfected that medium.
As an innovator Poe had no match in America. He contributed important works to several genres, though his reputation is first and foremost for horror tales. Poe did not create the movement known as “The Gothic”. That was done by Horace Walpole in 1764 with The Castle of Otranto. What Poe did was to take the elements of the Gothic, which are often unconnected and uncontrolled, and gave them a new direction, that of examining the mind as it is affected by horror, rather than dark Byronic men chasing young virgins around moldy old castles, seeing outre things which are later explained away, however poorly .
Poe also established the short story as a form. Novels and vignettes were common before Poe but he standardized the expectations for what is a “short story”. And as he did this, he also created the Mystery with one story in particular, “The Murder in the Rue Morgue” (Graham’s Magazine 1841). Poe creates the detective, C. August Dupin. He creates the impossible crime or locked room Mystery, the horror-crime, and gives in the resolution, the logical answer with fair play. It is from this well-spring that Sherlock Holmes and every detective to follow will be born. The Children of Poe. Without Poe, there would be no Hound of the Baskervilles, no “Little Grey Cells”. It starts with a murder in a French hovel.
If you’d like to read the rest, please check out Monster 3:From the Pages of Dark Worlds Quarterly