Edgar Allan PoeHorror · Classics·1809–1849
The Oval Portrait
Synopsis
A wounded traveler and his valet, Pedro, break into an abandoned château in the Apennines rather than spend the night outside. They take a small turret room, its walls crowded with paintings, and make themselves as comfortable as an injured man can.
Unable to sleep, the narrator finds a little volume on the bed that catalogues the pictures around him. He reads about them one by one, by candlelight, in a room that has clearly been left untouched.
One canvas stops him: an oval portrait of a young woman, so lifelike that it holds him fixed in place. He turns back to the book to learn how it was made, and the account he finds there is unsettling.
The story first appeared in Graham's Magazine in April 1842 under the title "Life in Death", then was shortened and retitled for the Broadway Journal in 1845. A very short Gothic horror piece, it builds atmosphere more than incident, and what the portrait cost the person who sat for it is the question the page leaves hanging.
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