“the boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague,” and his voice is still heard from beyond the grave. As Ocker puts it now, “Never RIP, Edgar Allan Poe.

In the annals of American literary culture, few have left as bold a mark as Edgar Allan Poe. In 1841, with the locked-room mystery “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe invented the genre of ...