Did Edgar Allan Poe Write a Werewolf Story?
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) wrote scary stories in a number of supernatural genres. He did not invent the horror short story, but he took it to unbelievable heights. He was the first to invent a closed room murder mystery (The Murders in the Rue Morgue of 1841) and a founding father of science fiction short stories. Poe also was the first to take us inside the mind of a killer in his watershed horror story The Tell-Tale Heart of 1843.
Yet Edgar Allan Poe failed to cover a few crucial sub-genres in his short stories. For instance, he did not write a vampire or monster story. I have blogged on the former in the past. That is unfortunate as I am convinced that no one could have written a vampire story like Poe.
Unfortunately, Poe also did not write a werewolf story. Below is a list of werewolf stories originally published in the English language during Poe's lifetime, which he may have read. They are found in the anthology I edited: The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849 The Table of Contents is:
Foreword by Andrew Barger
1831 The Man-Wolf by Leitch Ritche (1800-1865)
1846 A Story of a Weir-Wolf by Catherine Crowe (1790-1872)
1828 The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin by Richard Thomson (1794-1865)
1839 The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains by Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848)
1838 Hugues the Wer-Wolf: A Kentish Legend of the Middle Ages by Sutherland Menzies [Mrs. Elizabeth Stone] (1806-1883)
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