Title: The Imp of the Perverse
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.


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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)
Subjects: short story, self-destructive behavior, metaphors, coroners, hanging, Fiction, general