The Murders in the Rue Morgue Georges Cuvier, the French zoologist. This method also engages the reader, who follows along by reading the clues himself. Poe also emphasizes the power of the spoken word. When Dupin asks the sailor for information about the murders, the sailor himself acts out a partial death: "The sailor's face flushed up as if he were struggling with suffocation... the next moment he fell back into his seat, trembling violently, and with the countenance of death itself." Poe biographer Jeffrey Meyers sums up the significance of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue": "[it] changed the history of world literature." Often cited
The Masque of the Red Death (play) and locations used in the Masque of the Red Death, and took advantage of the fact that the Old Town Hall building dated back to 1893, 50 years after the publication of the story (treated as a factual account within the narrative), to weave fiction together with reality. Like the story upon which it is based, the Gold-Bug hunt relied on the decryption of ciphers and puzzles to lead the participants to the "treasure", which was finally discovered by a group of participants buried in a garden within the confines of the Battersea Arts Centre, and upon which the Old