Edgar Allan Poe wrote short stories and poems. His stories are of two types: horror stories, which are his most distinctive, and detective stories. The detective stories tend to be cool and analytical, focused on plot details and the logical processes of solving mysteries, rather than emphasizing atmosphere.

Poe's poetry and horror stories are the most classical exempla of his signature style. Typically, he uses unreliable narrators, who range from nervous and neurotic to outright insane. His narrators often comment on their nervous character, and use the rhetorical devices of interruption such as anacolouthon, aposiopesis, and correctio. Poe is especially adept at creating an atmosphere of horror and melancholy. His works have a strong psychological focus and often include elaborate descriptions of characters' mental states.

In poetry, Poe is distinguished by his use of sound devices such as repetition, alliteration, internal rhyme, and assonance to create hypnotic musical effects.

What type of writing did Edgar Allan Poe favor?

Edgar Allan Poe wrote in a genre called "Gothic," which was intended to appeal to his audience in a similar way to modern horror movies. People enjoy being scared or "spooked," and Gothic writing is meant to do just this. He wrote about death, about being buried alive, about the dead coming back to life (like today's zombie movies), and about the living left behind to mourn the dead.

Some of his work is referred to as Dark Romantic, which Poe would not have liked, based on the ideas of transcendentalism that he rejected publicly.

In general, readers may call Poe's writing horror, but he also wrote humorous stories and essays, including satires, hoaxes, and joke stories. He wrote very ironically, including using very rich people and situations as the butt of jokes.