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Primary sourceBook1844

The Purloined Letter

Edgar Allan Poe · 1844

A detective short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844, featuring his detective C. Auguste Dupin recovering a stolen letter through psychological insight.

Poe wrote this story, the third of his influential Dupin detective tales.

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Title page of 'The Gift: A Christmas, New Year, and Birthday Present, MDCCCXLV', published in Philadelphia by Carey and Hart, 1845. Text is printed in black serif capitals on a cream page.
Cover of The Gift, Carey and Hart, Philadelphia, 1845, containing "The Purloined Letter" by Edgar Allan Poe.

About this source

What it is

A short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 (dated 1844). It is the third of Poe's three stories featuring the amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin, following "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt."

Why it matters

In the story, Dupin recovers a stolen letter by thinking like the criminal rather than searching physically, as the police had done. Poe's Dupin stories are considered important early forerunners of the modern detective story, and this tale in particular is still studied for its model of analytical reasoning.

Look closer

  • Why does Dupin succeed where the police, with all their physical searching, failed?
  • What does the story suggest about the relationship between cleverness and morality?
  • How might this story have shaped later ideas about fictional detectives?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Edgar Allan Poe on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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Printed page titled 'THE RAVEN' showing the first three stanzas of Edgar Allan Poe's poem in a serif typeface on a light gray background. The text opens with 'Once upon a midnight dreary' and includes the refrain 'Nothing more.'Book

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The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe · 1845

Scanned magazine page headed 'The Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar A. Poe, with a page number 29 and running head 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. The page also contains a poem titled 'Longing' by W. W. Story above it. The printed text of Poe's story fills the lower columns.Book

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The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe · 1843

Scanned first page of the 1839 printing of Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Fall of the House of Usher", with the title, byline, and opening paragraphs of body text in a two-column-free single column on yellowed paper.Book

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The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe · 1839

Scanned page from a nineteenth-century magazine showing the start of the story 'The Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar A. Poe, with two columns of small black type and a few lines of dialogue quoted in the right column.Book

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The Cask of Amontillado

Edgar Allan Poe · November 1846

Scanned first page of the 1841 printing of 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' by Edgar A. Poe. Title centered at top, followed by the byline and two columns of body text in small serif type.Book

Primary source

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Edgar Allan Poe · 1841

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