The Murders in the Rue Morgue Resources

It's a testament to Poe's enduring popularity that his stories were filmed so early in film history. This is a silent short.

The tagline for this film on IMDB is: "Innocent Beauty – this was her wedding eve. On the wall a shadow … the beast was at large grinning horribly – cruelly. What was Her Fate?" As we can see, this is not a faithful adaptation. Dupin would not be pleased, but it still looks kind of awesome.

The horror version starring Karl Malden, who, hilariously, also appeared in a film called Billion Dollar Brain.

This one seems a little more interested in the narrative of the story itself. George C. Scott, better known as the title character in Patton or Paul Newman's manager in The Hustler, plays Auguste Dupin. Also with Ian McShane (the star of that new show Kings and Al in Deadwood) and a young Val Kilmer (seriously).

A site introducing a collection of original Poe manuscripts and documents held at the Cornell University Library.

This looks pretty great, but not too Poe-like.

The good folks at Project Gutenberg have supplied us with an mp3 audio book of several volumes of Edgar Allan Poe's writing. Volume One contains "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Here's what the guy looked like. According to the Poe Museum, his mouth was "considered beautiful."

A cool belle époque illustration of the Ourang-Outang's murder of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye by Aubrey Beardsley.

Clearly, the directors of this film had their own view of the Ourang-Outang's motives.

Poe was a busy guy in the American literary world: in addition to writing poetry and short stories, he also penned tons of really nasty reviews of his contemporary authors, which did him no favors in winning friends in the literary establishment.

An abbreviated yet thorough look at all of the problems people have had figuring out who exactly this guy Edgar Allan Poe really was.

Poe died in 1849 in Baltimore, at 40 years of age. So the 200th anniversary of his birth was recently celebrated. For his birthday, Virginia has set up a neat web portal with a blog, events calendar, and shop.

The City of Baltimore has preserved Poe's house for posterity. Check it out if you're in the neighborhood. Vincent Price said that the place gave him the creeps.

Did you know that Edgar Allan Poe has his own musical suite, composed in 1972 as a soundtrack to the film Horror Express? Well, look no further.

Here's an intriguing blog about Poe's influence on music during his lifetime and after.

Not to nitpick, or anything, but this looks more like a gorilla than an Ourang-Outang. Didn't they have anyone on quality control in the thirties?