Edgar Allan Poe (1809—1849) was an outstanding American writer, poet, literary critic and editor, the representative of romanticism. Known, first and foremost, as the author of tales of mystery and the macabre, he is also considered an inventor of the detective fiction genre, and some of his novelle contain the elements of science fiction, horror and fantasy. Psychological analysis and the ability to convey profound truth through phantasmagoria are being combined, in a masterly manner, in his artistic style which is characterised by the condensity and vividness of its images and the balance of its composition. The readers are brought forward the writer’s best-known novelle which have been included into the collection. Content The Masque of the Red Death The Pit and the Pendulum The Gold-Bug The Murders in the Rue Morgue The Purloined Letter The Spectacles.