From the Riddles of Ancient Egypt to Cryptography in the Renaissance — 3500 Years in the Making - Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times - page 37

Edgar Allen Poe
We conclude this section with an American writer of the nineteenth century.
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) gained fame for his tales of the macabre (see Figure
1.20). He initiated the genre of the detective story with his 1841 publication of
Murders in the Rue Morgue . Perhaps his best-known poem, which ranks high
in American literature, is The Raven , published in 1845.
He showed an early interest in cryptograms starting in 1839 when he wrote
articles on ciphers for Alexander's Weekly Messenger , a Philadelphia newspaper.
All the cryptograms in his articles were simple substitution ciphers, and he
really did not have the cryptanalytic skill that would warrant the reputation he
developed. Yet he may be responsible for more people becoming interested and
learning about cryptography than the most skilled cryptanalyst. This is largely
due to turning his attention to literary cryptology in his story, The Gold Bug ,
published in 1843. This story won him a prize of $100 from the Philadelphia
Dollar Newspaper , contributing to his fame. From a cryptographic viewpoint,
the latter is the most outstanding of his works since it revolves around the
cryptanalysis of a secret message. It was first published in book form in 1845
in a collection of his Tales . The Gold Bug may be considered to be one of his
detective stories, but it has the element of having added a seductive, bewitching
aspect to the cryptography used in the story. The solution of the cryptogram
in the story leads to great wealth and the one who breaks the cipher takes on
the role of sorcerer of a sort, since divination leads to the buried treasure, all
this from a manuscript with occult-like symbols. This helped to popularize the
story and thereby aided in increasing interest in the subject of cryptology itself.
Other writers followed in his footsteps with cryptographic detective tales, but
Poe created the template. Poe died on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland,
and was buried in the Westminister Presbyterian churchyard there. (See [186]
for a collection of his works.)
We have only scratched the surface of the volumes of writers we could cite
here, yet what we have covered gives us a suGcient appreciation that allows us
to move on to other aspects. We now turn to a look at cryptology in the Europe
of the Middle Ages, and some occult associations.