Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) practically invented the modern short story — and the detective story, and a good deal of horror as we know it. Orphaned young, expelled from West Point, perpetually broke, he made his living as a magazine editor and critic of legendary severity while producing the tales and poems that would outlast everyone who underpaid him.
Poe argued that a short story should be built backward from its final effect, every sentence aimed at a single emotional impact — and his own stories are the proof. The dread in them is architectural: confined spaces, unreliable narrators, obsessions that tighten like a vice. He died at forty under circumstances that remain unexplained, which he would probably have appreciated.
