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Poe published several revisions of old poems and also a few new ones. One of them, which seemed influenced by Virginia\'s illness, was \"Lenore\", which handles the subject of as how you should act when a young woman dies. In \"The Conqueror Worm\" like in \"The Mask of the Red Death\" dead means really dead, and it shows of Poe\'s spirits during Virginia\'s illness.
During the last year in Philadelphia Poe published \"The Pit and the Pendulum\" which is an intense tale of sensation. It\'s about a man who is tortured by the Spanish inquisition, among other things he is close to being sliced by a razor-sharp pendulum.
Poe also continued his work with crime and detection in tales like \"The Tell-Tale Heart\", \"The Black Cat\", and \"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt\". \"The Tell-Tale Heart\" is about a murder of an old man whose heart keeps beating and finally drive the narrator to confess his crime to the police. The alcoholic narrator in \"The Black Cat\" kills the cat several times but it keeps coming back. At one time he accidentally cleaves through his wife\'s head and bricks her corpse up in a wall, but the cat\'s howling reveals the hiding-place to the police.
\"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt\" is the second story about Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, who is now trying to solve the murder of a young woman. The story is based on an actual slaying that took place in 1841 of a New York \"cigar girl\" named Mary Rogers whose body was found in the Hudson River.
\"The Gold-Bug\" is another tale of ratiocination that also includes cryptography and an attempt on comedy. Poe won $100 for the story in the Dollar Newspaper. In the story Legrand decodes a cipher and with his black servant and a heavy scarab they search for a hidden treasure.
The language used in these stories is simpler and more straight-forward than the language Poe usually used, and reminds a bit of today\'s movies of violence. They are all innovative and adventurous and despite their simplicity Poe retained his poetic characteristics in his language.
In \"The Gold-Bug\" Poe uses a black servant that is superstitious and stupid and a black character in \"The Journal of Julius Rodman\" is described repellantly. Poe sympathized with the slavery in the South, but it has nothing to do with racial hatred. Poe considered, as many other Americans in the 1840s, that the black were less then human.
The tales might not have been a great financial success but they became very popular. Especially the prize-wining \"Gold- Bug\". Poe estimated that 300,000 copies of it was spread, many of them pirated. While living in Philadelphia Poe published 31 tales and stories, among them: \"Ligeia\", \"The Fall of The House of Usher\", \"William Wilson\", \"The Murders in the Rue Morgue\", \"The Pit and the Pendulum\", \"The Black Cat\" and \"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.\" It is admirable that he managed to publish so many popular tales while running from job to job, taking care of Virginia, insulting people, abusing alcohol, and so on.
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