... of him" and that the dead were coming after him.76 But this age was crying for more than superstitions; it had an "insatiable appetite for wonders," and Edgar Allan Poe was "usually three jumps in advance of the boldest of his contemporaries."77 He never falls into tradition, but creates his own.78 "Into regions of terror where Hawthorne [and ... ] Irving would have shrunk back disgusted," Poe plunges ahead, writing stories and poems such as "The Fall of the House of Usher", "Ligeia", "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Raven."79 At their best, Poe's works are vehicles for "explorin...

• Word Count: 3126
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School