Die Maske des roten Todes Edgar Allan Poe - Ungeachtet der Tatsache, dass eine Krankheit die Hälfte der Untertanen dahinrafft, gibt Prinz Prospero, der sich in eine von ihm entworfene Abtei zurückgezogen hat und in Sicherheit wiegt, einen pompösen Maskenball. Prinz Prospero liebt das Außergewöhnliche, sein Geschmack ist sonderbar. Er hat einen guten Blick für Licht und Farben. Durch die Gestaltung der Räumlichkeiten nimmt er beträchtlichen Einfluss auf die Erscheinung der Maskierten, durch fein abgestimmte Stimmungen zum Beispiel das Licht, etc. Die Veranstaltung findet in sieben Räumen statt, von denen nie mehr als einer vollständig gesehen werden kann. Im ersten Raum befinden sich gotische Fenster mit bunten Gläsern, die der Farbe der Fensterdekoration entsprechen. Der zweite Raum ist purpur, der dritte grün, der vierte orange. Ein weiterer Festsaal ist weiß, der nächste violett und schließlich gibt es einen schwarzen Saal mit scharlachroten Fenstern.

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writers oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as Americas first great literary critic and theoretician. Poes reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.Just as the bizarre characters in Poes stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the authors name.The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poes sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls school. Within three years of Poes birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poes siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poes handwriting on the backs of Allans ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.