This work is a collection of previously-published short stories from the dark pen of Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1840. Poe wrote the now-famous quote defending himself from the criticism that his tales were part of Germanism In preface of this book, If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany but of the soul . The collection was dedicated to Colonel William Drayton, anonymous author of The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Northern Abolitionists. The arabesque stories focus on a single aspect of a character, often psychological, such as The Fall of the House of Usher . A distant relative of Poe, modern scholar Harry Lee Poe, wrote that grotesque means horror , which is gory and often disgusting, and arabesque means terror , which forsakes the blood and gore for the sake of frightening the reader.[8] Even so, accurately defining Poe s intentions for the terms is difficult and subdividing his tales into one category or another is even more difficult. This work is a collection of previously-published short stories from the dark pen of Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1840.