The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

In 1838, as the U.S. began its Exploring Expedition to the South Seas, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue.

Crypts, entombments, physical morbidity: these nightmares are prominent in Poe’s tales, a fictional world in which the word that recurs most crucially is horror.