Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was a famous American poet, short-story writer and literary critic. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. After being orphaned at the age of 3, he was fostered by a wealthy businessman who sent him to school in England. After leaving school he studied at the University of Virginia. Although Poe enlisted with the army, he contrived to have himself discharged in 1831 for neglect of duty.

Poe began writing poetry in 1827, and published his first short stories in 1832. The following year he began working for the Southern Literary Messenger. His move to New York City in 1837 marked the beginning of his major fiction writing. The Fall of the House of Usher, perhaps his most famous novel, appeared in 1839. Much of his greatest fiction was published in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). 'The Tell-Tale Heart' was published in 1843. 'The Raven' (1845) became his best-known poem.

Poe's symbolism, impressionism and literary explorations of the grotesque quickly established his writing in the popular Gothic fiction tradition. His first-person narrative plunges into madness are particularly unnerving: among these are The Fall of the House of Usher, 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Black Cat', 'The Raven', 'The Cask of Amontillado', 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'.

'The Tell-Tale Heart' (1943)

'The Tell-Tale Heart' is a masterly short story of madness and murder, and is one of Poe's best-known works. This appalling first-person confession remains as tense and shocking as it was when first published in 1843.

The story of domestic violence is told from the perspective of a nameless narrator. The protagonist's personal account appears grounded in an irrational fear, the horror of which is only compounded for the reader by a continual insistence that the crime was not occasioned by insanity. Indeed, at the outset there is an admission that the victim presented no threat to the narrator: 'Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire.' Poe's narrator casts around for a justification of the crime: 'I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!' (Interestingly, in many cultures a malignant power has long been attributed to one who possess the 'Evil Eye'.)

Despite repeated protestations by the narrator that madness is not an issue, from the beginning readers will note evidence of abnormal sensory perceptions: 'Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.'

The crime may have been successfully planned, executed and concealed physically, but the narrator's mind and heart have their own dark tale to tell.

Poe was a pioneer of the short story. He defined the genre as a narrative that could be read at a single sitting of between half and hour and two hours. Its essential purpose was to create 'a certain unique and single effect' with everything in the narrative unified to serve this aim. A typical plot would have one or two short pieces of action introduced and brought to a climax, often by a twist at the end. The story is usually set in only one place. Characters are few in number, with the primary focus on one. 'The Tell-Tale Heart' is a perfect model of the genre.