Dark and eerie are Edgar Allan Poe's chilling stories, which manage without the usual repertoire of horror, without ghosts and specters. It is the people themselves who instill fear and terror: In the royal amusement society, a hunchbacked dwarf, ridiculed as 'Hopp-Frosch' due to his physical deformity, must ensure entertainment at the cost of his own dignity. Systematically humiliated, an insatiable thirst for revenge grows within him. He takes his profession to the extreme and indulges in a deadly joke. With contributions from Kindler's Literary Lexicon. Includes data on life and work, exclusively written by the editorial team of the literary journal TEXT + KRITIK.