Edgar Allen Poe was a lot of things — inventor of the modern short story, poet, alcoholic, horror writer, madman. But did you know he was also a prominent critic of high end interior design?

Poe had very strong opinions about what made for quality interior design versus design that fell on its face. He wrote about his ideas regularly in pieces like “The Philosophy of Furniture” in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. Smithsonian Magazine recently published an article about this little known aspect of Poe’s life.

According to Poe, the most high end interior design came from England and the worst….from America.

We’ve come along way since those days. Considering that the U.S. was a rugged frontier and Miami was nothing more than a swamp, who could’ve blamed him for failing to predict that we’d eventually be leading the high end interior design world?