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Edgar Allan Poe Books in Order

Explore Edgar Allan Poe books in order, with short summaries, poem and tale collections, series background, reading order help, and clear tips on where to start.

Last updated: June 11, 2026

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93 books

Tamerlane and Other Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

1827

Poe's first poetry book is youthful, earnest, and full of ambition, lost love, and the melancholy idealism that would stay with him.

Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

1829

An expanded early collection that mixes long dreamlike poems with shorter pieces about beauty, distance, longing, and poetic ambition.

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1829

A collected edition that brings together Poe's major tales, poems, and prose, useful for readers who want the range rather than a sampler.

A Tale of Jerusalem

by Edgar Allan Poe

1832

Set during the siege of Jerusalem, this short comic satire turns religious ritual and bargaining into absurd farce. It shows Poe's early taste for parody as much as plot.

Metzengerstein

by Edgar Allan Poe

1832

A bitter feud between noble houses, a mysterious horse, and a young baron's worsening obsession drive this early tale toward hereditary doom.

Ms. Found in a Bottle

by Edgar Allan Poe

1833

A traveler survives disaster at sea only to find himself aboard a ghostly ship rushing toward a final, almost cosmic abyss.

Berenice

by Edgar Allan Poe

1835

Egaeus grows obsessively fixated on his sick cousin Berenice, and Poe follows that monomania to one of his earliest and most disturbing endings.

King Pest

by Edgar Allan Poe

1835

Two sailors wander into a plague-ridden district and meet a grotesque mock court obsessed with death, drink, and decay.

Morella

by Edgar Allan Poe

1835

A husband watches fearfully as the dead do not seem willing to stay gone. Poe turns marriage, intellect, and identity into a compact tale of dread.

Shadow

by Edgar Allan Poe

1835

In a plague-stricken chamber, a small group of mourners encounter a strange presence that turns grief into something darker and less explainable.

The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall

by Edgar Allan Poe

1835

An eccentric craftsman tries to escape debt and ordinary life by building a balloon and setting off for the moon. It is part hoax, part adventure, part proto science fiction.

Four Beasts in One - The Homo-Cameleopard

by Edgar Allan Poe

1836

This satirical fantasy sends up tyranny and spectacle through a bizarre ruler and a city sliding into absurd chaos.

Maelzel's Chess-Player

by Edgar Allan Poe

1836

Poe applies cool logic to the famous chess automaton called the Turk and argues that a hidden human, not a machine, must be inside.

A Predicament

by Edgar Allan Poe

1838

This grotesque comic piece follows Signora Psyche Zenobia as her craving for sensational experience leads to a memorably absurd disaster.

Ligeia

by Edgar Allan Poe

1838

A grieving husband cannot escape the memory of his brilliant first wife, and his second marriage becomes entangled with obsession and possible return.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

by Edgar Allan Poe

1838

Poe's only novel sends Arthur Gordon Pym to sea for mutiny, shipwreck, hunger, violence, and a final Antarctic mystery that only grows stranger.

The Devil in the Belfry

by Edgar Allan Poe

1839

A devilish visitor crashes into an obsessively orderly village and throws its careful sense of time into comic disorder.

William Wilson

by Edgar Allan Poe

1839

A proud, reckless man is pursued through life by a double who seems to know him too well. Poe turns the chase into a study of conscience and self-destruction.

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

by Edgar Allan Poe

1840

This landmark two-volume collection gathers many of Poe's early stories, showing his full range from Gothic horror to satire, fantasy, and strange comic pieces.

The Journal of Julius Rodman

by Edgar Allan Poe

1840

This unfinished faux frontier journal imagines an expedition across the western wilderness and Rocky Mountains in the plain style of travel narrative.

The Man of the Crowd

by Edgar Allan Poe

1840

A recovering observer becomes fixated on an old man in London's streets and follows him for hours, only to find a human mystery that refuses to open.

The Philosophy of Furniture

by Edgar Allan Poe

1840

A witty essay on taste and interior design, this is Poe in satirical mode, judging curtains, carpets, and bad decorative habits with relish.

A Descent into the Maelstrom

by Edgar Allan Poe

1841

An old fisherman recounts how he was dragged into a gigantic whirlpool and survived by observing what panic hides from others.

Never Bet the Devil Your Head

by Edgar Allan Poe

1841

Poe spoofs moralizing fiction through the fate of Toby Dammit, a fool whose empty catchphrase ends in disaster. It is sharp, rude, and very funny.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

by Edgar Allan Poe

1841

Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin solves a brutal Paris murder that has baffled the police, and in the process Poe sketches the first modern detective story.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales

by Edgar Allan Poe

1841

A strong Poe sampler built around Dupin's breakthrough investigation and backed by other tales of terror, logic, and the uncanny.

Eleonora

by Edgar Allan Poe

1842

A dreamy valley, a first love, and a promise that outlives death shape this softer, more romantic Poe tale about memory and fidelity.

The Masque of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe

1842

Prince Prospero seals himself and his guests away from a plague, but Poe's famous allegory makes clear that walls and wealth will not save them.

The Mystery of Marie Roget

by Edgar Allan Poe

1842

Dupin takes on the death of a young Parisian woman and works largely from newspapers and inference, making this one of Poe's most analytical mysteries.

The Pit and the Pendulum

by Edgar Allan Poe

1842

An imprisoned man wakes in darkness during the Inquisition and faces a series of calculated terrors designed to break both body and mind.

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains

by Edgar Allan Poe

1843

Poe blends Virginia scenery, mesmerism, and unsettled memory in a tale where time and identity begin to blur.

Diddling

by Edgar Allan Poe

1843

A comic essay on petty fraud, this piece treats swindling as if it were a rigorous art with rules, methods, and gifted practitioners.

The Black Cat

by Edgar Allan Poe

1843

A condemned man recounts how drink, cruelty, and rage wrecked his life, while a cat seems to watch, return, and finally expose him.

The Gold-Bug

by Edgar Allan Poe

1843

After William Legrand finds a strange insect and an encoded parchment, obsession turns into a cipher hunt for buried treasure. It is Poe at his most briskly entertaining.

The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1843

A rare volume devoted to Poe's longer prose experiments, linking mystery, adventure, and the strange narrative turns he handled so well.

The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings

by Edgar Allan Poe

1843

A strong introductory volume that pairs Poe's best-known terror tales with poems and prose, making it easy to see both the storyteller and the stylist.

Mesmeric Revelation

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

A bedside session of hypnosis opens into a strange conversation about death, consciousness, and what may lie beyond the body.

Morning on the Wissahiccon

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

Part travel sketch, part meditation on beauty, this piece wanders along a Pennsylvania creek and turns scenery into something dreamy, almost enchanted.

The Angel of The Odd

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

After mocking improbable events, a skeptical narrator meets the spirit of absurd mishap and learns that bad luck can be both comic and punishing.

The Balloon-Hoax

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

Poe presents a fake news report of a transatlantic balloon crossing and shows how easily sensation can outrun skepticism.

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

A comic portrait of literary ambition and shameless self-promotion, this story skewers puffery, networking, and the business side of fame.

The Oblong Box

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

A shipboard narrator misreads a fellow passenger and his long wooden box, with tragic consequences. The tale turns grief and appearances into quiet horror.

The Purloined Letter

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

A stolen letter gives its holder dangerous leverage, and Dupin shows that the cleverest concealment may be the most obvious one.

The Spectacles

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

A vain young man falls hard for a woman he barely sees clearly, and Poe turns the mistake into a playful comedy of vanity, romance, and bad eyesight.

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

by Edgar Allan Poe

1844

A visitor tours a remote asylum and slowly realizes the rules inside may have been overturned. Poe mixes farce and dread until the institution itself becomes the punch line.

Anastatic Printing

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

Poe looks at a new facsimile printing method and imagines how cheap reproduction could reshape publishing, piracy, and the spread of texts.

Great Tales of Terror

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

A curated horror selection built around Poe's most chilling pieces, from buried fears and plague visions to guilt-ridden confession.

Landor's Cottage

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

A calm, almost pastoral sketch that lingers over a beautiful home and landscape. It offers a gentler late Poe, more reflective than terrifying.

Some Words with a Mummy

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

A revived mummy calmly dismantles modern self-importance, turning a parlor experiment into brisk satire on science, history, and progress.

The Colloquy of Monos and Una

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

Two lovers speak after death about the collapse of civilization, the end of the world, and what consciousness may become beyond it.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

A mesmerist tries to hold a dying man suspended between life and death, and Poe pushes the experiment toward one of his most gruesome payoffs.

The Imp of The Perverse

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

One of Poe's clearest studies of self-sabotage, this tale follows a murderer whose urge to confess grows stronger precisely because silence would save him.

The Oval Portrait

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

A wounded traveler studies a portrait in an abandoned room and discovers the terrible price of the artist's devotion to perfect beauty.

The Raven

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

Poe's most famous poem follows a grieving speaker whose midnight visitor turns sorrow into a ritual of repetition, memory, and despair.

The Raven and Other Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

The collection that cemented Poe's fame, pairing The Raven with other poems of grief, longing, beauty, and fatal memory.

The Thousand-And-Second Tale of Scheherazade

by Edgar Allan Poe

1845

Poe gives Scheherazade one more night and fills it with marvels modeled on real science and invention. The joke is that modern progress already sounds unbelievable.

The Cask of Amontillado

by Edgar Allan Poe

1846

Montresor leads Fortunato into the catacombs under the pretense of tasting rare wine, and revenge closes in with terrible patience.

The Domain of Arnheim

by Edgar Allan Poe

1846

A wealthy dreamer uses his fortune to create an ideal landscape, and Poe turns garden design into a meditation on beauty and artifice.

The Philosophy of Composition

by Edgar Allan Poe

1846

Poe explains, perhaps not without some mischief, how deliberate choices in tone, length, and refrain shaped The Raven.

Eureka

by Edgar Allan Poe

1848

Poe's strangest major work is a prose meditation on the universe, mixing cosmology, theology, intuition, and sheer intellectual daring.

Annabel Lee

by Edgar Allan Poe

1849

Poe's late poem turns a lost seaside love into a haunting ballad of memory, devotion, and grief that refuses to fade.

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1849

A broad collection of Poe's short fiction, spanning detective stories, macabre classics, comic pieces, and strange speculative tales.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

by Edgar Allan Poe

1852

One of the classic Poe samplers, this collection brings together the tales of horror, suspense, and deduction that fixed his reputation.

Politian

by Edgar Allan Poe

1923

Poe's unfinished verse drama, based on a notorious murder case, circles jealousy, honor, and fatal passion in a more theatrical register than his stories.

Ten Great Mysteries

by Edgar Allan Poe

1960

A themed selection of Poe stories and poems built around puzzles, dread, and sharp reversals, good for readers who want a compact mystery-heavy sampler.

Tales of Mystery

by Edgar Allan Poe

1963

A compact selection of suspenseful Poe stories, good for readers who want the eerie mood and sharp endings without a complete edition.

The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1969

A generous omnibus that gathers Poe's signature stories and poems in one place, showing how closely his dread and lyric melancholy belong together.

Letters Until Now Unpublished

by Edgar Allan Poe

1973

A documentary volume of Poe's letters, useful for readers who want the writer offstage, with work worries, relationships, and literary plans in his own voice.

Great Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1979

A broad anthology of Poe favorites, balancing Gothic terror, psychological breakdown, and the puzzle-minded stories that helped invent detective fiction.

The Detective Stories of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1979

A focused collection of Poe's analytical mysteries, led by Dupin and supported by other tales of clues, codes, and reasoning under pressure.

The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1992

A comprehensive one-volume Poe, combining the major stories and poems for readers who want the classic pieces in a single edition.

The Complete Stories

by Edgar Allan Poe

1993

A near-comprehensive gathering of Poe's fiction, moving from satire and sea adventure to detective stories and the dark psychological tales readers know best.

Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

1995

An introductory poetry selection that makes Poe approachable for younger readers while keeping the eerie music, sadness, and vivid imagery of his verse.

Tales of Terror and Detection

by Edgar Allan Poe

1995

A smart pairing of Poe's two strongest modes, the terrifying tale and the analytic mystery, in a concise themed selection.

The Poetic Principle

by Edgar Allan Poe

2000

This late essay lays out Poe's view that poetry should aim at beauty and emotional intensity rather than moral instruction or argument.

Tales and Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

2004

A one-volume introduction that puts Poe's major fiction and verse side by side, useful if you want both the stories and the famous lyrics.

Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works

by Edgar Allan Poe

2007

A full gathering of Poe's poetry, from early ambitious pieces to the musical late poems that made his voice unforgettable.

Tales of Mystery and Terror

by Edgar Allan Poe

2008

A selected volume of Poe's darker work, built around dread, guilt, revenge, and the uneasy border between reason and madness.

The Best Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

2009

A strong selection of Poe's most effective short fiction, built around the stories of madness, revenge, guilt, and ratiocination that still read cleanly.

21 stories and "The Little Cord"

by Edgar Allan Poe

2011

A broad anthology of Poe pieces that moves through terror, riddles, vengeance, and dark wit, giving a useful cross-section of his shorter work.

POE

by Edgar Allan Poe

2011

A compact Poe collection that samples the tales and poems where grief, obsession, and reason slide into nightmare.

Poe!

by Edgar Allan Poe

2012

This Selected Shorts collection spotlights Edgar Allan Poe in performance, leaning into suspense, dread, and psychological unease. It is a compact audio choice for classic mystery and horror moods.

The Rationale of Verse

by Edgar Allan Poe

2013

Poe takes apart meter, rhythm, and sound in an ambitious essay on how verse works on the ear and why form matters.

A Few Words on Secret Writing

by Edgar Allan Poe

2014

Poe explores ciphers and codebreaking with brisk confidence, turning cryptography into both entertainment and a test of reasoning.

Poe: Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

2014

A poem-centered selection that highlights Poe's musical language, dreamy melancholy, and lasting fascination with beauty, loss, and memory.

Weird Tales and Short Stories

by Edgar Allan Poe

2014

A varied anthology of Poe's stranger fiction, mixing Gothic dread, black humor, adventure, and the odd speculative turn.

The Raven and Other Selected Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

2015

A poem-centered selection that highlights Poe's musical language, dreamy melancholy, and lasting fascination with beauty, loss, and memory.

Selected Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

2016

A curated entry point to Poe's short fiction, sampling his best-known tales of murder, obsession, detection, and buried fear.

The Fall of the House of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe

2016

An unnamed narrator visits Roderick Usher's decaying mansion and finds illness, dread, and family collapse seeping into the very walls. Few Poe tales fuse atmosphere and psychology more completely.

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales

by Edgar Allan Poe

2016

A gateway collection of Poe's Gothic fiction, gathering haunted houses, unstable minds, and elegant dread in some of his most famous stories.

Edgar Allan Poe Collection

by Edgar Allan Poe

2017

An omnibus of Poe's signature work, mixing horror tales, detective fiction, and melancholy poems in a convenient single volume.

The Bells and Other Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

2017

A late poetry collection full of sound and incantation, best known for poems that turn bells, mourning, and lost love into music.

The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

2023

A curated one-volume introduction to Poe, bringing together the core horror tales, detective pieces, and poems that shaped his reputation.

Where should I start?

If you want a broad introduction: The Tell-Tale Heart and Other WritingsThe Fall of the House of Usher and Other TalesTales of Mystery and Imagination
If you want classic detective fiction: The Murders in the Rue MorgueThe Mystery of Marie RogetThe Purloined Letter
If you want pure gothic terror: The Fall of the House of UsherThe Pit and the PendulumThe Cask of Amontillado
If you want the poems first: The Raven and Other PoemsThe Bells and Other PoemsAnnabel Lee
If you want adventure and the strange side of Poe: Ms. Found in a BottleA Descent into the MaelstromThe Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Author bio

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, to two touring actors, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. Before he was three, both parents were gone, and he was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. He was never formally adopted, but Richmond was the city that shaped him, the place where he went to school, read widely, and started to imagine a life built around words.

His early years were unsettled. Poe spent part of his childhood in Britain, then returned to Virginia and later enrolled at the University of Virginia. He did well academically, especially in languages, but money problems and conflict with John Allan pushed him out after less than a year. In 1827 he left for Boston, published Tamerlane and Other Poems, and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He rose quickly, reached sergeant major, and later entered West Point, only to leave that path too.

He learned early that talent did not protect anyone from chaos.

By the early 1830s, living in Baltimore, Poe turned more fully toward fiction. He began publishing stories that mixed Gothic dread, satire, puzzles, and strange scientific ideas. He also worked as an editor and reviewer in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, writing at speed for magazines that did not pay much and did not offer much security. In 1836 he married his cousin Virginia Clemm, and the small household he shared with Virginia and her mother became the emotional center of his adult life.

The breakthrough most people know is The Raven, published in 1845. It made him famous almost at once, but not financially safe. That gap, public recognition on one side, constant money trouble on the other, runs through much of his life. He kept writing stories, poems, essays, reviews, and literary criticism, often with a sharp eye for structure and craft.

Read a handful of Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gold-Bug, The Raven, and you can feel how wide his range really was.

Some readers come for the atmosphere. Some come for the logic. Poe is one of the few writers who can give you both in the same small space. He could write about a mind cracking under guilt, a detective solving an impossible crime, a house that seems to share a family's illness, or a buried code that turns into an adventure. Again and again, he returned to obsession, doubles, premature burial, hidden messages, grief, and narrators who are certain they are rational right up to the moment they prove otherwise.

He was also serious about the mechanics of writing. In essays such as The Philosophy of Composition and The Poetic Principle, Poe argued that effect matters, that a poem or story should be shaped carefully rather than allowed to sprawl. That interest in form helps explain why so many of his best pieces are compact and intense. He liked compression. He liked design. He liked the feeling that every sentence was pushing toward a single mood or revelation.

Virginia's long illness and death in 1847 hit him hard. His final years were marked by grief, unstable work, and failing health, though he kept producing ambitious work, including Eureka, his odd and sweeping prose meditation on the universe. In October 1849 he died in Baltimore at the age of forty. The exact cause has never been settled.

What remains is a body of work that still feels unusually alive. Poe helped shape modern detective fiction, pushed horror inward toward psychology, and even wandered into early science fiction. He did all of that in a life that was short, messy, and often painful. That may be part of why the work still carries such force. It feels handmade under pressure.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 93 Edgar Allan Poe Books in Order (Complete List 2026)