This book builds upon recent theoretical approaches that define queerness as more of a temporal orientation than a sexual one to explore how Edgar Allan Poe's literary works were frequently invested in imagining lives that contemporary readers can understand as queer, as they stray outside of or aggressively reject normative life paths, including heterosexual romance, marriage, and reproduction, and emphasize individuals' present desires over future plans. The book's analysis of many of Poe's best-known works, including "The Raven," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," show that his attraction to the liberation of queerness is accompanied by demonstrations of extreme anxiety about the potentially terrifying consequences of non-normative choices. While Poe never resolved the conflicts in his thinking, this book argues that this compelling imaginative tension between queerness and temporal normativity is crucial to understanding his canon.

Paul Christian Jones is Professor of English at Ohio University, USA, and the author of two books, Unwelcome Voices: Subversive Fiction in the Antebellum South (2005) and Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment (2011).

1. Introduction: Poe, Time, and Queerness.- 2. Resisting Reproduction in Poe's Family Fictions: "Morella," "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher".- 3. "My Evil Destiny": The Queer Childhood and Queer Adulthood of William Wilson.- 4. Queer Spaces in "The Masque of the Red Death" and the Dupin Mysteries.- 5. "Nevermore!": Non-Normative Desire and Queer Temporality in "The Black Cat" and "The Raven".- 6. Epilogue: Poe's Queer Afterlife: Revisiting "The Masque of the Red Death" in the AIDS Era.