# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Edgar Allan Poe.

- [Unknown Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): He is the skeptical, slightly tipsy consciousness through which Poe stages one of his strangest comic hauntings, a man who trusts print and reason over apparitions. When a puncheon-bodied visitor with bottle arms insists
- [C. Auguste Dupin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/c_auguste_dupin.md): Dupin lives in moody seclusion in the Faubourg Saint Germain, sharing chambers with the narrator and giving the Future to the winds. His analytic triumphs in the Rue L'Espanaye affair make his name a household word among
- [William Legrand](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/william_legrand.md): Legrand lives in self-imposed exile with his freedman Jupiter, his fortunes dashed and his temper moody, until a chance discovery sets his analytical mind ablaze. His feverish certainty about a hidden treasure strains th
- [Jupiter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/jupiter.md): Jupiter has followed Legrand into island exile, tending him with stubborn devotion and a freedman's wary pride. His fear of the mysterious bug and his garbled accounts of the night's events make him at once a source of h
- [Edgar Allan Poe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/edgar_allan_poe.md): Adopted into Richmond wealth by John Allan, Poe was petted, spoiled, and shown off, yet his nature remained sensitive, self-respecting, and free from selfishness. Debts and an ungovernable passion for card-playing estran
- [Roderick Usher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/roderick_usher.md): Usher is the last of an ancient, branchless line, his family and its house so merged that the peasantry call both by one name. His letter—wildly importunate, evidence of nervous agitation—draws the narrator to the tarn-s
- [Marie Rogêt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/marie_roget.md): Marie Rogêt assists her widowed mother's pension before her charms draw the attention of a Palais Royal perfumer, whose shop becomes a haunt for her admirers. Her sudden week-long disappearance and subdued reappearance s
- [Madame Lalande](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/madame_lalande.md): Madame Lalande moves through Parisian society as a captivating widow, drawing the eager attention of a narrator convinced of his own discernment. Her elegance and composure mask a design that turns his vanity against him
- [Ligeia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/ligia.md): Ligeia enters her narrator's life so gradually he cannot recall where they met, yet her low musical voice and rare erudition bind him utterly. She is emaciated, otherworldly, and obsessed with the doctrine that will surv
- [William Wilson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/william_wilson.md): William Wilson drifts through school and university as a self-indulgent heir, only to find his schemes undone by another boy who matches his name, his bearing, and his whispered reproaches. The double's interference bree
- [Fortunato](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/fortunato.md): Fortunato moves through carnival in motley, greeting his friend with excessive warmth and boasting of his taste in vintages. He prides himself on sincerity in wine even as he plays the quack in painting and gems. That si
- [Hop-Frog](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/hop_frog.md): Hop-Frog and his fellow captive Trippetta serve a king who delights in humiliating them, especially by forcing wine on the dwarf, for whom it brings near-madness. When the king strikes Trippetta for pleading on his behal
- [Morella](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/morella.md): Morella shuns society and attaches herself to her husband alone, drawing him into the mystical writings she studied in Presburg. Her erudition is profound, and he becomes her pupil, lingering hour after hour by her side 
- [Eleonora](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/eleonora.md): Eleonora is a child of the enchanted valley, beloved by her cousin with a devotion so absolute that he swears before God never to betray her memory. When she dies, she promises to watch over him in spirit, sighing on the
- [Berenice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/berenice.md): Berenice and her cousin Egaeus are pledged to marry, though his love has curdled into something closer to monomaniacal observation. Illness hollows her face and body until no vestige of her former self remains, yet her t
- [Monsieur Maillard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/monsieur_maillard.md): Monsieur Maillard greets visitors at the gate of his dilapidated château with old-school dignity and an air of authority, ushering them into parlors of books, flowers, and music. He manages his Maison de Santé on the soo
- [M. Valdemar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/m_valdemar.md): M. Valdemar is a man whose general amiability has recommended him to those around him, and whose willingness to submit to the narrator's mesmeric experiments makes him the subject of a singular inquiry. As his health fai
- [Prince Prospero](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/prince_prospero.md): Prince Prospero is happy, dauntless, and sagacious in the manner of one who has decided that grief is folly. He withdraws with a thousand friends into a fortified abbey, where buffoons, ballet-dancers, musicians, Beauty,
- [Thingum Bob](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/thingum_bob.md): Thingum Bob clawed his way into the literary establishment not through talent but through audacious theft and relentless self-promotion, treating editors and rivals as rungs on a ladder. His hunger for recognition is mat
- [Pierre Bon-Bon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/pierre_bon_bon.md): Pierre Bon-Bon runs a celebrated café in the cul-de-sac Le Febre, where his pâtés and his essays sur la Nature are equally renowned among the savants of Rouen. He believes the intellect and the stomach are intimately con
- [Toby Dammit](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/toby_dammit.md): Toby Dammit was a terror from the cradle, gnawing cards at six months and cursing at twelve, his wickedness only sharpened by every corrective thrashing. As an adult he never actually wagered money, but his favorite expl
- [Mr. Shuttleworthy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_shuttleworthy.md): Mr. Shuttleworthy is the borough's most prosperous merchant, a man whose bare word is good for a thousand and whose christening as Charles gave him that ingenuous face proverbially worth more than any letter of recommend
- [Charles Goodfellow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/charles_goodfellow.md): Old Charley Goodfellow is Shuttleworthy's closest crony, a daily visitor who drinks his neighbor's Château Margaux by the quart and professes brotherly affection. When Shuttleworthy vanishes, Charley's grief is so overwh
- [Cornelius Wyatt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/cornelius_wyatt.md): Cornelius Wyatt is a painter of refined taste and misanthropic habit, traveling from the Continent to New York with his new wife, his two sisters, and a large oblong box addressed to his mother-in-law in Albany. He keeps
- [Doctor Ponnonner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/doctor_ponnonner.md): Doctor Ponnonner moves through the drawing rooms of the curious, the sort of man who proposes to unwrap a mummy the way others propose a card game. His eager, slightly pompous hospitality drives the evening's entertainme
- [Allamistakeo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/allamistakeo.md): Allamistakeo arrives in the story as a specimen to be unwrapped, catalogued, and admired, but his resurrection reverses the gaze entirely. He possesses an unhurried dignity and a devastatingly polite contempt for the dis
- [Scheherazade](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/scheherazade.md): Scheherazade steps into the king's chamber not as a victim but as a strategist, having read enough Machiavelli to know that a story left unfinished is a life left unlived. Her ingenuity is matched by her nerve, and her f
- [Von Kempelen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/von_kempelen.md): Inventor who allegedly discovers the secret of transmuting lead into gold.
- [Mr. Crab](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_crab.md): Eccentric businessman who appears in 'The Business Man'.
- [Pompey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/pompey.md): Servant who assists his master in a comedic misunderstanding.
- [St. Eustache](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/st_eustache.md): Fiancé of Marie Rogêt, suspected in her murder.
- [Mr. Talbot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_talbot.md): Friend of the narrator in 'The Spectacles', advises against the marriage.
- [Mr. Bullet-head](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_bullet_head.md): Editor of a newspaper who engages in a typographical feud.
- [Thomas Bob](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/thomas_bob.md): Literary figure and rival of Thingum Bob.
- [Dr. Templeton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/dr_templeton.md): Physician who treats the narrator in 'A Tale of the Ragged Mountains'.
- [Mr. Augustus Bedloe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_augustus_bedloe.md): Man who experiences a strange mesmeric journey into the past.
- [Pundit](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/pundit.md): Scholar in the futuristic tale 'Mellonta Tauta'.
- [Hans Pfaall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/hans_pfaall.md): Man who claims to have traveled to the moon in a balloon.
- [Eiros](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/eiros.md): Spirit who recounts the destruction of Earth by fire.
- [Mr. Blackwood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_blackwood.md): Editor who advises on writing sensational articles.
- [Miss Psyche Zenobia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/miss_psyche_zenobia.md): Ambitious writer who follows Blackwood's advice with disastrous results.
- [Pompey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/pompey_the_servant.md): Servant who accompanies Psyche Zenobia on her misadventure.
- [Diana](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/diana.md): Newfoundland dog who saves his master from a maelstrom.
- [John A. B. C. Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/john_a_b_c_smith.md): War hero revealed to be entirely composed of prosthetics.
- [Pluto](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/pluto.md): Black cat beloved by the narrator, later killed and avenged.
- [Mr. Kissam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_kissam.md): Man who testifies about seeing Marie Rogêt after her disappearance.
- [Captain Hardy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/captain_hardy.md): Ship captain who assists in the voyage in 'MS. Found in a Bottle'.
- [The Marchesa Aphrodite](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/the_marchesa_aphrodite.md): Beautiful woman who dies in a tragic love affair in Venice.
- [Lady Rowena](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/lady_rowena.md): Second wife of the narrator in 'Ligeia', who dies and is possessed.
- [Madeline Usher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/madeline_usher.md): Twin sister of Roderick Usher, buried alive and returning from the tomb.
- [Virginia Clemm](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/virginia_clemm.md): Wife of Poe, appears as a character in biographical sections.
- [Mr. Allan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters/mr_allan.md): Foster father of Edgar Allan Poe, mentioned in biographical sections.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_14_se/characters