The Imp of the Perverse

By Edgar Allan Poe

Subjects: short story, coroners, hanging, metaphors, self-destructive behavior

Description: "The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. Beginning as an essay, it discusses the narrator's self-destructive impulses, embodied as the symbolic metaphor of The Imp of the Perverse. The narrator describes this spirit as the agent that tempts a person to do things "merely because we feel we should not." "The Imp of the Perverse" was first published in the July 1845 issue of Graham's Magazine. ---------- This story also contained in: [Classic Crime Stories](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL4098282W) [Complete Tales and Poems ](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14937994W) [Edgar Allan Poe Reader](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14937971W) [Historias estraordinarias](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14938009W) [Ιστορίες αλλόκοτες](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24936750W) [Mysteries and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24955662W) [Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14938033W) [Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24844940W) [Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24864179W) [Poe Reader](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17854941W) [Selected Prose, Poetry, and Eureka](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14938089W) [Selected Tales](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21184008W) [Selected Tales of Edgar Allan Poe ](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14938092W) [Tales](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24695775W) [Tales of Mystery and Horror: Vol. III](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19956142W) [Tales: Mystery and Occultism](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14938139W) [Tales: Mystery and Occultism/Horror and Death](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24903243W) [Tales: Volume III](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24945061W) [Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15646184W) [Works of Edgar Allan Poe: In Five Volumes: Volume Two](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL273463W) [Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Vol. II](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24834309W)