 With Poe's short stories you can escape from the real world with just a few pages as Poe develops the genres of the Gothic science fiction and detective fiction. As you can see from these illustrations his work focuses on themes of mystery in the macabra, he experiments with horror in its many different guises and its effect on human psychology. Now fans of the Gothic genre will no doubt be familiar with Edgar Allan Poe and who many may recognise his face especially that moustache. This portrait of Poe is by bright and born artist Aubrey Beardsley. Eo'r yw'r cinchau vinnydd y botwch, a yn ymddangos y pwn yn teimlo yn tynnu honon gyda llrich clywed. A wedi bod nhw'n gallu ei cynllun cympranc lle o'r ffianton yn ymdrygiadol. Ile o'r ffianton o'r ffianton yn ymdrygiadol bydd eisiau ei ddweud yn mynd o'r pwn yn y llïdd yma i y meddwl yng Nghymru, ac ei bwrw i'r pwn yn amlwyfydd lle o'r eu cyrefweinlu cymryd cyrraedd o ychydig iawn, o'r ffianton o'r gaelเตwll, a dweudio'r trofiau ymlaen nhw i'r gweld. Yn ymdweud, o'r pwysig yn y cwmwysig, yn ymdweud o alcoholism ac yn ymdweud o'r cychwyn ac yn ymdweud o William Wilson, mae'n gweithio'r llyfr o'r ymdweud o'r llyfr yn ymdweud o'r hynny'n gweithio'r hynny'n gweithio. Y Llyfrgell Bryddiad yn ymdweud yw'r gwleidio'r llyfrgell ymdweud o'r llyfrgell ymdweud o'r llyfrgell ymdweud iawn i'r effluenciaeth yng Nghymru yng Nghymru. I love Irish illustrator Harry Clark's Black and White Illustrations from this 1919 publication. Clark's detailed and contorted images of the characters draw in the reader and unsettled them just as much as Poe's words. I find his representation of the protagonist in the tell-tale heart particularly chilling. You can almost feel his distress and fear through the shape of his body and his eyes look straight through you from the page. English brick illustrator Arthur Rackham, known for his artwork for The Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland, lets his illustrations take a darker turn as he accompanies Poe's work in this 1935 publication. His colour representations of Poe's stories transport the reader into a number of dreamlike or rather nightmarish and unsettling scenes. Poe was a champion of the short story as a form which was an important genre in American literary history. Now at the beginning of the 19th century many short stories in America came about as a result of the growing production of magazines and indeed many of the tales that appeared in Tales of Mystery and Imagination initially appeared in literary magazines before being collated into this collection. Now famous titles like The Fall of the House of Usher was initially published in 1939 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine while The Pit in the Pendulum was first printed in a Christmas annual in 1843. The collection also contains other well-known tales such as The Mask of the Red Death and one of my favourites, The Telltale Heart. Now although Poe was a US writer he had a real impact on the British Gothic, his influence surpassed the shores of America providing inspiration for the lights of Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde and even Angela Carter right up into the 20th century. Carter even wrote the 1982 short story The Cabinet of Ed Granpo about him which you can see more of on the Discovering Literature website and the Argentinian short story writer Jorge Luis Borges was also a champion of Poe's. So even if just for half an hour I hope you'll find a Poe short story to occupy your imagination over the coming weeks.