The collective monograph presents the works of the participants of the I International Conference on Comparative Studies of National Cultures “Edgar Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Fyodor Dostoevsky and the problem of national genius: analogies, genealogy, filiation of ideas” (May 2013, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University ). The works of literary scholars from Great Britain, Russia, the USA and France examine a variety of themes and motifs that unite three great writers of different nations: the genius of Christianity and the demons of nationalism, a huge city and squalid corners, a flâneur-dreamer and an underground spiteful critic, prophetic birds and poor people, psychopathy and sociopathy, etc.