“Eleonora” (1841) is a lesser-known short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The tale is a romance in the way that Nathaniel Hawthorne defined the genre, as well as a fantasy with a wide emotional range from happiness to despair. In it, Poe explores a husband-wife relationship in a beautiful, isolated setting. Like so many of Poe’s female characters, Eleonora is doomed to an early death, but not before extracting a promise from the man she leaves behind and who ultimately breaks that vow. Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn called it “one of his finest stories” (329). British writer Henry Stephans Salt called the story “perfect” and “the loveliest and most beautiful of all Poe's prose writings” (203).
The main character and narrator, who is named Pyrros in its first printed version, but is unnamed in...
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Citation: Velella, Rob. "Eleonora". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 September 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5399, accessed 09 June 2026.]
