Edgar Allan Poe's Influence On Literature

Edgar Allan Poe had a major impact to literature and brought many changes. He introduced a new concept which were mysteries and the first detective story. His stories set him apart from other writers at the time because they built a suspense that no one else was doing at the time. He is the Stephen King to generations before us. Poe has even impacted Stephen King himself! Along with many other writes who are still influenced by his writing today. Horror is bigger today than ever and we can thank Edgar for that. There is a vast library of commentary on Edgar, a lot of people bash him based on Griswold’s biography on Edgar. “Mr. Poe is too fond of the wild — unnatural and horrible! Why will he not permit his fine genius to soar into purer, brighter, and happier regions? Why will he not disenthrall himself from the spells of German
. . . Mr. Poe is at once the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America. It may be that we should qualify our remark a little, and say that he might be, rather than that he always is, for he seems sometimes to mistake his phial of prussic-acid for his inkstand.” — (James Russell Lowell, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Graham’s Magazine, February 1845.) Although he was heavily criticized, many seemed to view him as genius. “That perfection of horror which abounds in his writings, has been unjustly attributed to some moral defect in the man. But I perceive not why the competent critic should fall into this error. Of all authors, ancient or modern, Poe has given us the least of himself in his works. He wrote as an artist. He intuitively saw what Schiller has so well expressed, that it is an universal phenomenon of our nature that the mournful, the fearful, even the horrible, allures with irresistible