The Short Stories

Abstract

Poe wrote some forty short stories, ranging in theme through horror and mystery to ratiocination and fantasy. He also wrote humorous essays (as, for example, ‘Diddling Considered as one of the Exact Sciences’) philosophical prose poems (e.g., ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una’) and scientific fantasias (e.g. ‘Mellonta Tauta’). During his lifetime a handful of his short stories were collected together under the title Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, but Poe’s attempts to secure the publication of his tales in England met with no success, despite the help of Charles Dickens, whom he had met in Philadelphia in March 1842. On 27 November 1842 Dickens wrote to him in these terms:

I have mentioned it to publishers with whom I have influence, but they have, one and all, declined the venture. The only consolation I can give you is that I do not believe any collection of detached pieces by an unknown writer, even though he were an Englishman, would be at all likely to find a publisher in this metropolis just now.