The Imp of the Perverse

Edgar Allan Poe

"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. ---------- 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...