The Best of Edgar A. Poe

Name _______________________________________________________ Date________________________

The Purloined Letter

1. Who was Monsieur G---, and why had he come to see Dupin and the narrator?

2.What is the problem G---- has come to discuss?

3. Who is D--- ?

4. Describe the police investigation of D---'s apartment.

5. When the Prefect returned a month later, what did Dupin give him?

6. How did Dupin get the letter?

7. Why did Dupin replace the purloined letter with a facsimile?

8. In "The Purloined Letter," the reader does not get to participate in the solving of the problem. We only get to
read Dupin's account of how he solved it. Why? What is Poe trying to emphasize?

9. Again, as in many of his stories, Poe leaves out many details (such as people's names). Why?

10. G--- says, ". . . but then he is a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool." Why does Dupin say
this reasoning by G--- helped to keep G--- from solving the problem?

11. "Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault." What does Dupin mean?

12. ". . . occasions may occur when x2 + px is not altogether equal to q . . . ." Explain.

Vocabulary - The Purloined Letter

Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues

Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence. Use any
clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what you think the
underlined words mean on the lines provided.

1. ...certain document of the last importance has been purloined from the royal apartments.

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2. ..."no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined."

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3. ...I did not abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than
myself.

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4. "We had; but the reward offered is prodigious."

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5. The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude...

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6. And this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the universality with which it has been received.

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7. ...these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came with the intention to suspect.

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8. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward.

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Part II: Determining the Meaning -- Match the vocabulary words to their definitions.

___ 1. purloined                      A. Moving rapidly and heedlessly

___ 2. sagacious                      B. Reinforcing

___ 3. astute                            C. Bad or offensive

___ 4. prodigious                    D. To make known

___ 5. promulgate                   E. Enormous

___ 6. egregious                      F. Shrewd

___ 7. corroborative                G. Wise

___ 8. precipitate                    H. Stolen