The Pit and the Pendulum

by Edgar Allan Poe · first published 1842

"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe and a work of horror fiction. It was first published in 1842 in the literary annual The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843. The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, and is set very loosely during the Peninsular War between Spain and Napoleonic France (1808–1814), although it invokes the feared Inquisition of earlier centuries. The narrator of the story describes his experience of being tortured.

Summary: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Genre:

Horror fiction, Gothic fiction

Original language:

English

Reader rating:

★ 3.0 / 5 (2 on Open Library)

Year page:

1842