"King Pest: An Allegory" is a fantastic account by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) who with excellent humor narrates a night of terror, taking on the subject of epidemics, in this case the Plague. Poe first published individually in September 1835, in the Southern Literary Messenger newspaper, but his status as a classic author was acquired when he appeared in the anthology Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840.