Edgar Allan Poe probably remains, both in his life and in his work, America’s most controversial writer. Numerous biographical and critical studies did not succeed in rectifying the initially distorted “myth” of Poe, promulgated by his hostile first biographer, as a self-destructive, alcoholic, almost demoniac creature. Even today, after much serious research and analysis, the true Poe remains enigmatic and elusive. The same is true of his works. Experts as important and varied as D. H. Lawrence, Henry James, T. S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, and Aldous Huxley differed greatly in assessing his works’ merits, with opinions ranging from extravagant eulogy to total dismissal. No work of his excited more diverse opinion or earned more conflicting analyses than his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.”