The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The MCT edition of The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe is reproduced in its entirety and includes Michael’s “language illustrations”—close-ups of poetic techniques, four-level analyses of interesting grammar, and comments about writing strategies. Challenging vocabulary is defined at the bottom of each page.

Originally published in Graham’s Magazine in 1841, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is regarded as the first detective story—the story that created the genre. Michael writes in his introduction that reading this short story is to “witness the very point in intellectual history at which one of our great literary traditions began.” Poe used an array of literary devices in this book to achieve to maximum effect the horror and mystery of a murder by a non-human agent in nineteenth-century Paris.