While much of Poe’s works defy categorization, he made a large contribution to the Gothic fiction movement in America in the nineteenth century. Gothic fiction is typically defined by its engagement with horror, death and romance, exploring the unknown and the depths of the human psyche. Gothic literature is also defined by an emotional component that confronts the obscure, the sublime, and terror, often brought about by encounters with the unknown.

The Gothic literary movement began in the mid-eighteenth century with the work of English writer Horace Walpole, who infused his book The Castle of Otranto (1764) with a sense of medievalism, mystery, and the macabre. The movement spread through much of Western Europe and to Russia. Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) further shaped and redefined the genre. By the mid-nineteenth century, gothic fiction had waned in popularity but was ready for a revival as audiences returned to the “penny dreadful” serial fictions. Just as Poe began to gain popularity in America, contemporary writer Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights (1847) in England, while Charles Dickens’s many works also reflected a gothic influence.

Poe added his own unique interpretation of the genre with “The Raven,” as well as with fiction like The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1842), among many others.