Great Tales and Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work.

The melancholy, brilliance, passionate lyricism, and torment of Edgar Allen Poe are all well represented in this collection. Here, in one volume, are his masterpieces of mystery, terror, humor, and adventure, including stories such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Pit and the Pendulum, and his finest lyric and narrative poetry—The Raven and Annabel Lee, to name just a few—that defined American romanticism and secured Poe as one of the most enduring literary voices of the nineteenth century.

Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author’s personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research.

Read with confidence.

Genres: Classics, Poetry, Horror, Fiction, Short Stories, Mystery, Literature

432 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Mahrin Ferdous · Rating 4 out of 5]

অ্যাডগার অ্যালান পো — এর রহস্যময়, অন্ধকার কল্পজগতে প্রবেশ করেই বের হয়ে আসা যায় না। কারণ,
অ্যালান পো এমনভাবে আচ্ছন্ন করেন যেন চেনা জগতে অদৃশ্য কোন চাবুকের আঘাত ...

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. First time officially reading Poe, and I was underwhelmed. It was fine, but didn't really do it for me.

[Rumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

All right, I'll obviously need to read these in English, but for now, the Bulgarian translation is quite good as well. Something that struck me is that Poe has an unusual way with words. He does an incredible job in creating an unique atmosphere, which, coupled with Alan Parsons' "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" really makes for a peculiar and interesting reading.
The poems I've read so far have an unexpected bright side to them. I can't say I'm thoroughly enjoying them, but this discovery was quite intriguing.
However, I do prefer the stories, or should I say, "tales", because that is the impression they make. It's as though you're reading a more grown-up version of those favourite fairytales. In terms of their fascinating narating style that few "classic authors" could achieve. The darkness of the fairytales only makes them more interesting because you don't know what to expect from the ending, for it is hardly the "happily ever after" cliche.
I will not point out the amazing atmosphere for each tale individually because it's a distinct feature of all the works I've read so far.

As always, Bulgarian editions of "Selected works" bravely select anything but the most famous and known works. Anyways, here's what my edition contains.

Tales
"Loss of Breath"
"MS. Found in a Bottle"
"The Assignation"
"Morella"
"Shadow, A Parable"
"Silence - A Fable"
"Ligeia"
"How to Write A Blackwood Article" was, simply put, a beautiful surprise. For my limited literary experience, this tale felt strangely familiar - as hilarious as Jerome K. Jerome, as quotable as Oscar Wilde. I can now see why his fellow cadets were anxious to collect money for the publication of his books, and came out disappointed after realising it was a "serious" work. Poe had great talent for a satirist as well. I suppose it's sad that his life somehow inspired the dark, yet unique tone of his writing.
"A Predicament, The Scythe of Time"
"The Man of the Crowd"
"The Oval Portrait" tells us about art and people's fascination of it. To what extent could we give away our life for the sole purpose of portraying it on a canvas? Does it do us justice to dedicate our very existance to capturing life instead of living it?
"The Masque of the Red Death" is a fable of our path through life. However colourful and carefree we might attempt to imagine it, there lies the inevitable dark room that we're all afraid of but can't escape.
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt"
"The Pit and the Pendulum"
"The Gold Bug"
"The Spectacles" is a cautionary tale of not trying to hide our natural defects, pushed to absurdity, yet thoroughly enjoyable.
"The Premature Burial"

Poetry
"Song"
"Spirits of the Dead"
"Dreams"
"Israfel"
"The City in the Sea"
"Lenore"
"Hymn"
"Dream-Land"
"The Raven"
"Ulalume"
"Eldorado"
"The Bells"
"Annabel Lee"
"The Conqueror Worm"
"To One in Paradise"
"To Helen"
"To ——"
"To Science"
"The Haunted Palace"
"The Coliseum"

[Finn · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading this while drinking black coffee & listening to classical music is def something 🤌

[Michael Gerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the guilt and madness in "The Tell-Tale Heart", to the grim, macabre claustrophobia of "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Pit and the Pendulum", to the obsession and deception in "The Oblong Box", to the despondent gloom of "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Fall of the House of Usher", to the Treasure Island-like feel of "The Gold-Bug", to the whodunit in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", and the haunting resonance of poems like "The Raven", "The Bells", and "Annabel Lee", the quirky genius of Edgar Allan Poe and his stories has set the standard for the modern horror and detective story that has kept readers awake in the late hours of the night for more than a century.

[Devin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reeeeeally struggled through this one. Poe is obviously super influential and great, but I don't think I was in the right head space for this collection

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been years since I read Poe.
And this compilation was a great re-introduction to his greatness.

All of the short stories - I think all of the poetry, too - are told from the first person. Is that first person Poe? Or does this technique enhance his mystique - this entanglement with the macabre?

Many of the short stories also resemble Holmes stories, with the nameless narrator playing Watson to the tale’s sleuth. Poe did invent the art form of the detective story. And the bones of every other one are in these stories, as well. Some of the sentence construction is overwrought by today’s standards, and can be tedious to get through.

I couldn’t help but wonder what a marvel it must have been for readers to happen upon something like this almost 200 years ago. First these new detective stories; then the inclusion of the gothic elements, along with rudimentary horror … this must have been electrifying for his readers. What a time to have been alive…

[Elaine Wisdom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always happy to read Edgar Allan Poe

[Karla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was harder than I thought it was going to be. It took me six months!!!!!! And it is NOT a big book at all. The thing is that I had long periods of time where I could not pick it up...it was just frustrating. Poe, you are frustrating! And good! But frustrating nonetheless. I don't know if it is because I am a modern reader and I am already used to mystery stories and stories where the "bad guy" is the main guy as well that I had so much trouble with Poe. I finally realized that for ME the best way to read this book of short stories was to read one story and then let the book rest for a week or so and then take it up again for a new story. When I tried to binge read it, it became too much.
My favorite stories were in no particular order:

*The Tell-Tale Heart
*The Masque of the Red Death
*The Murders in the Rue Morgue
*The Pit and the Pendulum

And my favorite one:

* The system of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

[Ann L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edgar Allen Poe is not an easy read. Matter of fact it took me almost three weeks to read it, all due to the fact there were times my eyes glazed over. But Poe is an awesome writer, very intelligent and descriptive. He is of an interesting character to come up with these horror stories. Now I know where people have gotten their ideas for movies and other books. My favorite story was THE GOLD BUG, but there are many stories which are very good. Some not so good and those were the ones I had a hard time trying to stay on track with, but I made myself read them nonetheless, because I was bound and determined to finish this book no matter what. I am so happy I stuck with it and I admire Poe's writing even though there were times I wasn't sure what he meant in his stories. He is definitely a horror story master!

[Joey Peacher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book makes me realize that I am not a Poe fan. With the exception of a few stories, I skipped over or stopped reading several. Didn’t know what I was reading most of the time and the stories didn’t progress quickly enough. Someone seemed to always murder someone without good motive. Hop-Frog and the Tell-Tale Heart stood out to me as stories about the crushing weight of guilt and the importance of treating everyone with respect. I did develop a better appreciation of his most famous poem, The Raven. It is the highlight for me and a good example of what unresolved grief can do to one’s spirit and psyche.

[Kevin Hunkovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guy seems kinda depressed

[Hasnaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Owen DeVries · Rating 5 out of 5]

How influential is Edgar Allan Poe? Let's look at the numbers. The mystery or detective story, a category virtually invented by Poe, represents 10% of fiction book sales in the current day. The horror genre, in which Poe set the standard for all later writers, accounts for another 3-4%. The suspense of thriller story, another specialty of this author, generates around 15% of current-day fiction sales. Poe also dabbled in science fiction, comedy and other categories, but you hardly need to consider his efforts in those areas in order to conclude that he exerted a greater influence on modern storytelling than any other author in history.

But are you ready for Poe the postmodernist? Can you make room for him in the pantheon of avant-garde innovators? Yes, the careful student of his writings finds, again and again, extravagant literary devices that few other adopted until the second half of the 20th century.

For example, did Poe invent the unreliable narrator? Consider, as evidence in his favor, the opening to his story The Black Cat:

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very sense reject their own evidence...."

This is standard fare for Poe. In the opening paragraph of The Tell-Tale Heart the narrative admits that listeners think he is insane. At the start of The Pit and the Pendulum he declares that his sense are leaving him. Again and again we encounter this opening gambit. Did anyone before Poe populate stories with narrators who insist with such vehemence, in advance of the tale, that they simply can't be believed?

Indeed, we encounter other postmodern elements in Poe's writing. Note, for example, his deliberate blurring of the line between fiction and non-fiction. In The Premature Burial, he even insists at the outset that his story is only worth telling because it is scrupulously true - and he actually sticks with fact-based reportage for the first half of his tale, although this is merely a ruse to lure the reader deeper into the deception. In The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, he even boasts that he solved a real-life murder with the deductions made by his fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin - a greatly exaggerated claim, but presented persuasively in the context of the story. Poe was so good at this kind of manipulation of textual expectations that many readers actually thought that his tale The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - in my opinion, the most gruesome Poe story, almost repulsive in its particulars - was a trustworthy account of an actual incident.

The most basic expectations are thwarted again and again by this author. One of the most time-honored rules of horror fiction is to start with an appearance of normalcy and conventionality - if only so that the terrors ahead will have all the more shock value. Even the lowliest director of the most tawdry slasher films understands the importance of doing this. But Poe will have none of it. His narrators (and almost every one of his masterpieces is told by a first-person narrator) typically launch their testimonies with grand declarations in the opening paragraph. They will tell us that they are falling into lunacy, or seeking extreme revenge, or that the reader can hardly expect to believe the dark and eerie things that have happened to them. Poe is so fixated on setting an extreme mood for his tales that he dispenses with the slow and gradual build-up and instead immediately thrusts us into the manias and deliriums of his protagonists.

Poe maintains his intensity of vision even in passages where we might expect formulaic prose. Consider the opening sentences of Ligeia where Poe's narrator describes the facial features of his beloved - a passage that, in the hands of another writer, would take up a few phrases with the familiar modifiers and metaphors. Not so with Mister Poe. Instead he launches into a feverish and obsessed disquisition on the limits of the memory and aesthetics as it grapples with the ineffable qualities of an effulgent countenance. The description lingers much longer then we expect, eventually stretching out for almost one thousand words. Before the expostulation is finished, the reader is repulsed by its neurotic quality. This perhaps enhances the effect of the story, but we still might wonder at Poe's willingness to destroy the symmetry of his tale by focusing so much on the symmetry of his heroine's visage. But at the story's conclusion, when the narrator recognizes these same features, but now transplanted to the face of his dead second wife Lady Rowena, the reader feels the horror amplified - and only because of the elaborate care Poe had lavished on the appearance of Ligeia at the outset. Compare how other, lesser authors handle stories of the resurrected dead - usually with all the subtlety of a Hollywood zombie film - and marvel at the means by which Poe achieves a much grander effect. Here the key to the entire story resides in the skill with which Poe can depict a woman's face in prose - the very passages that most genre authors would fill with clichés.

Poe is equally unconventional in his constructed of detective stories. Even the most basic requirements of the genre are flagrantly violated. But who can blame the author who essentially invented the genre for imposing his own rules? Even so, what could be more basic than the expectation that the murder be committed by a murderer? Yet in his debut mystery, The Murders in Rue Morgue, Poe refuses to accept even this obvious stricture.

We have had more than 150 years to assimilate Poe, but it's still bloody hard to treat him as part of the literary mainstream. Too many stranger ingredients show up in these stories...and I'm not just talking about the phantasmagoria of the plots. For example, at the mid-point in The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe inserts a poem - a strange choice for a short story writer, signaling a rupture in the narrative, but one that this author resorted to in other tales. The poem in question, entitled The Haunted Palace, is ostensibly about a stately residence that has been taken over by some strange power, marked by "vast forms, that move fantastically to a discordant melody" and a "hideous throng" that rushes out the door, but never seems to have left the premises.

What could this possibly mean? When Poe had previously submitted this poem to a literary magazine, the editor rejected it, claiming that he found it incomprehensible. Most scholars today interpret the poem as an allegory of the collapse of a person's mind and personality - a view supported by the many comparisons in the text between the palace and a human head. In the context of the short story, the poem is sung by Roderick Usher, who is undergoing precisely this kind of collapse. This is one of the most evocative moments in Poe's oeuvre, but few authors today would dare emulate its discords and arcane misdirection. Instead of abandoning a poem few readers could hope to understand, he puts it in a story!

Note that this interpretation of The Haunted Palace could be applied, with more than a little justice, to most of Poe's tales. Again and again in his work, the author obsesses over setting scenery, and in almost every instance, these details represent a kind of externalization of the psychological malaise embedded in the narratives. Few nineteenth century writers were more sensitive to mental states than Poe, and this is true even when he seems to be describing a landscape, or a building, or even a raven perched upon a pallid bust of Pallas just above his chamber door. His plots can be outlandish, the particulars so beyond the conventional bounds of realism that the mind rebels at the required 'suspension of disbelief'. But Poe remains convincing nonetheless, and almost entirely because of the extraordinary conviction of his narrators. They are committed entirely - and sometimes ought to be committed legally - and this intensity of vision draws us in to depths of the story, even when our rational mind rebels.

How strange, nonetheless, that this author of genius should have set in motion the world of American genre fiction—the most despised segment of the literary marketplace. Yet perhaps here, above all, does Poe prove his prescience. We are now living through a golden age in which literary fiction is borrowing heavily from genre concepts. A host of highbrow literary stars—Cormac McCarthy, Salman Rushdie, Jennifer Egan, Junot Díaz, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Lethem and many, many others—have come to realize that horror, sci-fi, fantasy and suspense plots can serve
as springboards for masterpieces. And with that leap of imagination and embracing of mystery they have finally caught up with Poe’s extraordinary Tales of Mystery & Imagination.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read Poe before, but this edition has tales I have not read yet, and the ones I have just felt like familiar friends. I started this book in June because I went to Baltimore over the summer and visited the Poe house. I had an ambitious plan to read all of his works before I went on my trip. I couldn't... they are too macabre for me read all at once. It took me 6+ months to get through all of them. I have to admit it, the Poe house was a bust. In a sketchy neighborhood and they are not sure anything there actually belonged to Poe. Oh well... it was fun finding new tales of his. I particularly enjoyed "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether." it is perfectly suited to the craziness we are experiencing right now. All though they properly diagnosed these conditions as insane back then... now they are just trendy. I also love Poe's poems. The dark poerty resonates with me. Like Christina Rosetti. I guess I just like my poerty dark.

[Steph LaPlante · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed The Raven which really doesn't need to be said, but I also really enjoyed Ligeia.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Nikoleta · Rating 3 out of 5]

At long last, I have finished this book! Safe to say, it took me quite a while but I'm really happy I finally got through some Poe!

Updated Review:

On Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

This is probably the oldest book I own. It’s this miniature thing that when I open starts crumbling its pages. The first thirty pages were a struggle to get through due to this issue but that didn’t stop me from getting engulfed in Poe’s weird stories.

The only story of Poe’s I had ever read was “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which I read in high-school but didn’t remember until I finished it. Otherwise, I own one other collection of stories by Poe, which I attempted to read over summer 2015 but ultimately gave up on (after two pages). This time, though, I persevered and read all the way through, even though it took me about two months.

Overall, I think this was a great introduction to Poe – I loved most of the selection of stories and I found only a few boring or unenjoyable. The poems were also good but I’m not great at analyzing poems and none really stood out to me. For the short stories, my favorites were definitely “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Gold Bug,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “A Descent into the Maelström.”

Poe’s prose is definitely a stand-out; I found it quite beautiful and haunting. In his short-stories, he was descriptive but also didn’t give out too much detail when he didn’t need it. While I do think some of the descriptions can get a bit lengthy and boring, getting through them is often worth it. Unfortunately, while I love writing poetry, I am terrible at analyzing it, so nothing really stood out to me, other than “Annabel Lee,” which I read and analyzed in that same high-school class. But, hey, now I can finally say I’ve read “The Raven.”

Final word: Enjoyable.
Date finished: 2015.04.09
Rating: 3 | 5

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being an only child until age eight and my little brother being rather uninteresting until he began speaking, I found most of the time spent with family rather boring. And we spent a lot of time with family, our parents visiting father's mother and her friends at their home in Park Ridge almost every weekend.

Grandmother Lajla, Dad's mom, was fine when one was alone with her, but during those weekend evenings she and her husband--Dad's dad having died when I was five--were "entertaining", so there were lots of old people who had at best only a theoretical interest in kids, lots of drinking, lots of smoking (everyone smoked back then), lots of boring chatter. Lajla, the hostess, affecting an English accent, would be lost to us.

She did, however, have a library, a library of some quality, much of it now lost, and it was to her bedroom and her books that I would retreat during those tedious adult parties.

It was in grandmother's library that I first found and read Edgar Allan Poe, beginning with The Murders on the Rue Morgue, which I didn't like very much. There may have been some exposure in elementary school as well. In any case, I persevered to discover some Poe, mostly the short stories, that I did like.

This particular collection is something I picked up towards the beginning of high school, after having been exposed to some more Poe through our Adventures in American Literature textbook and after having decided to try to educate myself by going beyond the assigned readings. By this time I'd therefore already read some of the contents, but not all.

[Dr. T Loves Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edgar Allen Poe was an incredible writer. He has a subtlety to his writing that is impressive, in that he can get the reader to picture the most terrifying and horrible scenes in his or her mind despite the fact that Poe rarely uses actual vivid descriptions (a point my students argue about every year, and then are amazed when I point out that it is, in fact, true!).

Poe was also a master of the ambiguous - many of his works leave readers to draw their own conclusions about what, precisely, happens after the last words on the page. And yet, none of his stories feel incomplete - Poe manages to convince the readers that there is a definite ending, though every reader's ending could be different than another's.

If you haven't read any Poe, you should definitely check out at least a few of his key stories - The Cask of Amontillado is a favorite, as is The Black Cat (which does not, despite what you will think afterwards, have much gore in it), The Tell-Tale Heart (see my previous parenthetical note), and of course, the classic poem The Raven.

As you read Poe's stories, you will probably find yourself thinking, "I've seen something sort of like this before... but not quite as good as this!" That's because Poe was the father of modern horror stories, and countless authors have copied/stolen/built on his work. But accept no substitutes! Check out the original master - and be sure you have a nightlight you can keep on at night...!

[♥ Rebecca ♥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Pit and the Pendulum is one of my absolute favourite stories ever. Thats why I bought this book. I wanted more of Poe's words. I love the words he chooses to say something. I first read The Pit and the Pendulum when I was in eighth grade and I remember hating Poe because he used so many words to say something simple and it really frustrated me, but now I think its beautiful. He can turn something mundane into something poetic.

I also especially enjoyed Hop-Frog and The Murders in Rue Morgue.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Poe in high school and enjoyed getting reacquainted during my library's Big Read 2011. (I was on the speech team in high school and read The Tell-Tale Heart and The Bells as part of my repertoire.) His stories and poems are downright disturbing and the best of them stick with you a long time. ("True! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad?") I gave this book Four Stars only because it contains some of his less compelling works as well as his great stories and poems. Poe was truly an original.

[Anne (ReadEatGameRepeat) · Rating 3 out of 5]

1) Short Stories - They were ok, I just don't think they were for me, the first few I found interesting, but after that I got bored. I think this might be because these are not supposed to be read back to back, and I think if I hadn't read them back to back I would've enjoyed them more.

2) Poems - They were interesting, a quick read, I am happy I didn't need to read and (over)analyse them. I enjoyed most of them, they were well written, again I think maybe they were not supposed to be read as quickly as I read them.

[Comingunraveled · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a love/hate relationship with Poe. I love his finely crafted prose, his spine tinglingly poetry and his scintillating wit. I hate his overly verbose and bloated paragraphs and slow buildups that take dozens of pages before getting to the meat of the story. Poe, though I adore you, it will likely be a while before our paths once again cross.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well I always enjoy all of Edgar Allen Poe's tales and poems, so once again this is another great collection

[Andrés Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anabell Lee... The Raven, The Black Cat...
madness all over, and unexplained situations are the most important part of these stories.
It is a must-read, and it somehow reminded me of Mary Shelley.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a bit of an oddity in my collection. I first read Poe in 10th grade (over 20 years ago, now) in the form of "Masque of the Red Death" in my literature text book. I was completely absorbed by the story's vivid imagery and Poe's incredible use of the English language. It was all I could talk about that night at the dinner table with my family. I don't remember if this was for Christmas or my birthday, or perhaps just a random gift, but at any rate my parents bought this book for me not long after that day. I managed to get through it but with difficulty as my love of reading frequently clashed with my mild dyslexia and reading comprehension difficulties in those days. It's only in this reread that I've noted a lot of odd things about this particular Poe collection.

This book is pretty straight forward. It's an inexpensive collection of Poe's work that was part of a series of classic literature releases specifically geared for Wal-Mart as a way (in my estimation, anyway) of capitalizing on the ever present need for cheap copies of such books for students in the American education system. As with any collection I review I had a few favorites, namely "Ligeia", "Masque of the Red Death" and "Hop-Frog". "Ligeia" is the narrative of a man recounting his lost love of the same name and how she came back to haunt him later in his life. The first half of the story is heart-rending in how he describes the titular character and what they meant to each other, and the second half is absolutely chilling due to the unsettling way in which she comes back into his life. "Masque of the Red Death" is the tale of an arrogant noble who sought to avoid a plague ravaging the lands around him by sealing himself and his guests in his castles and indulging in endless reveries, only to to see the plague find its way in nevertheless in a truly frightening fashion. The story is one of many that Poe wrote about tuberculosis, a disease that had a profound effect on his life in the worst ways imaginable, and it tackles how unstoppable the disease is even in the face of all precautions. That aside, the titular character has always sent a chill up my spine because of his inexplicable appearance within the castle, his haunting words and the horrifying aftermath of his appearance. "Hop-Frog" recounts the tale the titular character, a little person with a few other physical difficulties who was captured by a cruel king with an even crueler sense of humor and made to be a jester in this king's court. The crux of the tale is Hop-Frog using his position to ingeniously engineer a brutal and satisfying revenge with the aid of his only friend, a fellow captive from his country. As you might expect from the fact that this is a story from the middle of the 19th century the descriptions of the title character are pretty appalling, particularly from the king and his council. Even the narrator, who is sympathetic to Hop-Frog, uses some exceedingly uncomfortable language to describe him. Despite all that, though, the finish is incredibly cathartic, particularly given current events being what they are in 2025.

I really enjoyed this book but there are a few oddities that caused me to take a star off the review. My copy of the book has a big orange circle on the cover that advertises the fact that it was part of a two-pack of books that sold for $1, and it really shows, particularly in the printing and editing. I worked as a printer for some years so these things stand out to me whether I want them to or not. There was a lot of print that was faded or missing entirely, and there were a lot of missing words throughout the book. I did have a few issues with Poe, though, specifically in the two Dupin stories. I am an avid lover of over the top, parlor room whodunits and I will be forever grateful that Poe effectively created the genre with this character, but I had forgotten how much extraneous writing there was in the Dupin stories. Dupin, like many detectives of his sort, uses examples that at first seem entirely unrelated to the matter at hand to explain his process. I normally enjoy those as they're a fun way to explain these things, but the repetitive, needlessly verbose way in which he expounds on these anecdotes is excruciating and I couldn't wait for them be done. One last oddity with this book: its ISBN. I always use the ISBN when I add books to my collection on this site as it's typically a very accurate way of finding the exact copy I own, but in this instance it brought me to a page on this site explaining that every book in this series was, inexplicably, given the same ISBN. The writer of the page further suggested finding an equivalent book elsewhere on the site and adding that into your collection. I don't know why but that's stuck in my head ever since I first saw it about a month ago. All that said, it's a great little collection and, especially for the price, not a terrible way to read a bit of classic American literature by one of its all time greats.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading Poe's short stories in high school, and as a cinephile Roger Corman's adaptations of Poe's work have been an invaluable influence on my cinematic taste and aesthetic preferences. Other adaptations in film and comics (especially Richard Corben's) have also proved influential to me. But when I tried to read Poe himself as an adult I always struggled. In 2022 I read the Oxford World Classics edition of his Selected Stories, and found it a slog to get through. His prose leans towards the verbose and baroque, and it's not easy to read. I realize now my mistake was in trying to read anthologies that were packed with too many stories. When I read them in high school I just read individual stories one at a time. This edition put out by Vintage Classics is a nice balance because it contains only his most famous and essential stories, has a readable print size, and is succinct (though it could have done with more samples of his poetry). Poe was really ahead of his time. The horror stories are justifiably famous; The Tell-Tale Heart with its unhinged unreliable narrator, The Masque of the Red Death with its gothic sumptuousness, and my personal favorite, The Pit and the Pendulum which tells of the horrors of the Inquisition (the final sentence, "The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies." is a breathtaking finale). But what I loved most were the three Parisian mysteries with C. Auguste Dupin. Though not the first detective stories (that honor, in my opinion, goes to Hoffmann's Mademoiselle De Scudery) they were the first to really formalize the conventions of the genre. The germ of everything from Sherlock Holmes to even noir is contained within them. The stories are mostly Dupin digressing about what powers of observation he used to solve the crime. The Mystery of Marie Roget is also an early example of a true crime narrative. If you're new to Poe, or are looking to get back into him, this is the collection to get. After reading this I dived in and got his complete works, but I'm not quite sure how I'll approach it. It would be a mammoth undertaking to read them all at once, so I think I'll read and review the individual stories as they strike my fancy, or group them into themes based on the formatting of some other collections.

[Charles Sheard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally I was just going to read a few of the stories, that I either hadn't read before or had forgotten. But since it is October, I ended up reading them all again to get in the mood. I give full credit to Poe advancing genre fiction, tapping into psychological currents of fear, terror and madness, and offering some unique and memorable ideas which continue on in today's collective conscience and which inspired multitudinous authors. For that, he gets the some-what generous four stars.

However, his actual writing style is utterly overwrought for my tastes. And I am also struck by an early comment in his "Philosophy of Composition" when he says that:

Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indescribable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.

This seems to highlight something which for me is a weakness of many of his stories - that they are primarily filler, biding time as he leads up to the final reveal of his original idea. His utter focus on the denouement often leaves the reader slogging along a wide-open road amid an empty plain towards the scary castle which is so clearly the only destination, but which is still some distance away. And often that ultimate reveal is itself predictable (perhaps moreso to modern readers than of his time?), thereby deflating the overall value of the story. After all, how many times does Poe go back to the same ultimate plot device: the sister was walled up inside her tomb while still alive; the murdered old man's body was dismembered and boarded under the floor and the heart [seems to the murderer] still alive; a murdered wife's body sealed up within the cellar walls along with the black cat who is still alive; the enemy Fortunato walled up within the catacombs while still alive.

As to Poe's poetry, I don't find it generally appealing, though I do enjoy "The City in the Sea."

[Katie]

I read some of Poe's work before many years ago, but never the amount of work I read now - novellas and poems alike.

I thoroughly enjoyed many of the works, but of course I didn't love them all. It's hard to discuss this since it's a compilation of his work, but I really enjoyed reading and delving into more of his work and many that I never hear talked about.

I'd love to reread them again someday and have a discussion about them because there are a lot of things to discuss. This was a fantastic read for autumn and would absolutely read it during that time.

A fantastic read and one I plan on revisiting in the future.

It's difficult to put content warnings for these, since it's not present for everything in the book, but it has a lot of dark themes and deals with difficult topics as well as deals with things we as a 21st Century society would find uncomfortable or bad in various different ways, so keep all of that in mind when going in.