A variety of critical approaches illuminate different facets of Poe's complex imagination by concentrating on such famous tales as The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat and The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Gathers Poe's essays on the theory of poetry, the art of fiction, the role of the critic, leading nineteenth-century writers, and the New York literary world.

Offers an original approach to a number of nineteenth-century authors in terms of what are seen as the constitutive affective dynamics of their work. The author also draws on themes of ethical subjectivity in the work of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze to provide essential reading for those involved in nineteenth-century literature.

A classic collection of short stories.