He was the first person to use the term ‘short story’.

Poe is renowned for his Gothic style of writing, which incorporates elements of suspense, fear, horror, and death. Some of Poe's first-person horror stories include a psychological component that makes them stand out. Poe is able to reveal the character's uniqueness through first-person narration. Poe uses first-person narration in his short stories "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," and "The Cask of Amontillado" to help with characterization.

The oldest known use of the term is by Poe, who used it in 1840, over 40 years before the current OED reference from 1877. Given that Poe invented the short narrative, this is appropriate. (Here, we've included our picks for Poe's finest tales. Poe wrote ‘I have written five-and-twenty short stories whose general character may be so briefly defined’ in his preface to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. This fact was discovered by Martin Greenup – see his ‘Poe and the First Use of the Term “Short Story”‘, Notes and Queries, 60.2 (2013), 251-254.