Edgar Allan Poe

About Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) remains a towering figure in American and world literature, cementing his place as the 100th most historically important person according to the Pantheon project. As a key architect of the short story genre, he is widely credited with inventing detective fiction and significantly contributing to the development of science fiction. His distinct, often macabre, contributions to poetry and criticism, featuring intense psychological depth and Gothic themes, have ensured his lasting cultural influence across centuries and languages.

Poe’s cultural legacy is disproportionately reflected in modern internet attention. Ranking HPI #100, he accrued 2.2 million Wikipedia views in 2025. This level of attention, however, represents an overattention of approximately +4x relative to his historical importance, suggesting a continued, if perhaps niche, cultural relevance online. Interestingly, his view count is significantly less than that of historical contemporaries like Queen Victoria (#309 importance, 6.8M views), although he garners more attention relative to his historical rank than she does.

Despite the overall high attention relative to his ranking, Poe's 2025 viewership saw an 18.0% year-over-year decline. Yet, his short-term engagement showed strong positive momentum, with a +27% swing when comparing Q1 to Q3 performance, indicating that while overall traffic may be softening, bursts of reader interest remain strong across the year.