Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) shaped several genres at once. He invented the modern detective story with Dupin, perfected the tale of psychological terror, and made real contributions to proto-science-fiction, the lunar hoax of ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall’, the mesmeric ‘Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’, and the cosmological prose-poem Eureka. His insistence on the single, calculated effect influenced the whole tradition of imaginative short fiction.