Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

Slobodan Sucur (University of Alberta)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1839

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Gothic & Ghosts
Story

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

“The Fall of the House of Usher”, first published in 1839 in

Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine

, is possibly the best known of Poe’s stories and certainly the most often anthologized since 1847, when Griswold included it in

The Prose Writers of America.

According to T.O. Mabbott, the tale is biographical only to the extent that it concerns James Campbell Usher and Agnes Pye Usher, a real brother and sister, and children of actors, who were orphaned in 1814 and grew up as neurotics (

Poe

2:393). The tale has inspired much literary criticism, ranging from psychoanalytical and New Critical renderings to Romantic Ironist contributions (such as G. R. Thompson’s work) and many deconstructionist and/or post-structuralist ventures into the field, particularly in the last couple of decades.…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2929 words

Citation: Sucur, Slobodan. "The Fall of the House of Usher". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=905, accessed 20 April 2024.]

Save this article