The Purloined Heart: Affinities between Edgar Allan Poe and Early Works of Charles Dickens

This article examines the convergence of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Charles Dickens's "The Clock-Case: A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second." It demonstrates how these two stories overlap in plot, characterization, and the shared interest in representing the workings of a killer's mind. The article argues that both Poe and Dickens engage in a psychological study of their antagonistic characters and that, through a (sometimes) fraught working relationship, they inspired each other to pinpoint the process behind madness. Although Dickens's "Confession" is less well known than Poe's tale, this article suggests that it provided a clear conceptual framework for "The Tell-Tale Heart."