1809-1849 · American writer, poet & literary critic
Poe was a founding figure of American Gothic fiction and the modern detective story, known for tales of psychological terror like “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” and poems such as “The Raven.” His only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), is a sea-voyage tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and starvation that later influenced writers including Herman Melville and Jules Verne.