The Purloined Letter Dramatized

Although suspenseful music accompanies this 1952 dramatization, “The Purloined Letter” by American author Edgar Allan Poe lacks the element of horror found in most of Poe’s other short stories. Instead, this is one of Poe’s tales of ratiocination or reasoning, featuring the fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin. Along with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” this story is considered an early precursor to the modern detective story.

Would you like to read along with this dramatization?

You can find the full text of ”The Purloined Letter” here.

Note that this dramatization does not exactly follow Poe’s original story.

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If you found this dramatization of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Purloined Letter to be helpful in visualizing the story and characters, you may enjoy some of our other Introduction to Literature (E1) videos.

Of course, if you’d like to learn more about this author, you should check out our collection of other Edgar Allan Poe resources.

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When will you read Poe’s writing in Excellence in Literature?

Poe will be studied in several modules, including in EIL Unit 1 (Introduction to Literature)