She dies, they bury her in the dungeon, the men read gloomy poetry, and Roderick’s superstitious forebodings come to pass. All the now familiar tropes of the horror genre are there, (Gothic house, dark lake, dreary red velvet curtains etc.) but I suppose they were radical and new when Poe created them.

The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) features a narrator who is summoned to the melancholy House of Usher to provide aid to his childhood friend Roderick, who with his dying sister Madeline are the last of the line.

If you are a fan of the horror genre, you will presumably agree, but these stories just made me laugh. 1001 Books tosses around epithets such as gifted writer incredible legacy and with significance as indisputable as artworks so diverse as Borges’s tales, The Name of the Rose, and The Usual Suspects. Well, the good thing about bringing home this collection is that I have knocked off three titles from 1001 Books in the space of an hour, because there are two other short stories honoured by inclusion in the list.

It is simply impossible to imagine the modern novel without considering Poe’s masterful writing, and this seminal tale in particular. The Fall of the House of Usher is classic horror, a short story that has muscled its way into 1001 Books (a canon which is supposed to be confined to novels) because You know how it is… browsing at the library, you see a title that seems familiar, something that you meant to read at some stage because it’s listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die…

The house of usher book