This book contains tales and poems by Edgar Allan Poe that became innovative literature discoveries at the time and extremely popular in its genre: The Fall of the House Usher, The Gold-Bug, poem The Raven. Edgar Poe was one of the first American writers who wrote mostly novellas. Within twenty years Edgar Poe created two short novels, two poems, one play, about seventy stories, fifty poems and ten essays that were published in magazines and almanacs and then gathered in collection books.
Edgar Poe was highly valued by Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and Howard Phillips Lovecraft who admitted his pioneer role in the genres they were popularizing.
In his thriller stories Poe tries to show psychic side of the crime from the inside. He is not interested in social roots of the crime, but in unmotivated actions that go beyond normal behavior of a person in the society.
Nevertheless, in a series of stories while describing the acts committed by characters under influence of “contradiction demon” or “perversion demon”, Poe puts in rational reasons. For example, the character from the story The Black Cat understands that his brain is poisoned with alcohol, and as a result his mental health and temper were injured. But this reasoning is too plain and trivial for the thriller.
Narrating on behalf of the criminal, Poe brings actions under the control of contradiction demon. Combination of plans puts volume to the stories the events are at the same time rational and not, motivated and incredibly paradoxical.