The Edgar Allan Poe Complete Works Collection - Stories, Poems, Novels, and Essays

by Edgar Allan Poe, Peter Noble (Narrator), Jonathan Keeble (Narrator)

This is the complete collection of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, poems, novels, and essays, read by Audie Award-winning actors Peter Noble and Jonathan Keeble.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging science fiction genre.

This collection contains more than 160 of Poe's short stories, poems, two novels, and a selection of his essays.

Genres: Classics, Horror, Short Stories, Audiobook, Fiction, Poetry

Audiobook

Published December 30, 2021

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

[Kamas Kirian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The well known famous stories like, The Raven, Murders In the Rue Morgue, The Fall Of the House Of Usher, etc., are absolutely wonderful. There's a reason they're so famous and well known.

Basically, I found some good ones that I hadn't read, or in a few cases had never heard of. But there were some clunkers as well. Many of the ones that I hadn't heard of were only so-so. I had heard of, but never read The Cask Of Amontillado, nor 1002nd Night Of Sheherazade and was quite impressed with them. Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Eureka I found uninteresting. The Journal Of Julius Rodman I found interesting, even the inaccuracies, because it was geography I am familiar with, and wish he had been able to complete it.

The dual narrators did a good job. There were occasionally pronunciations I found odd, but that might just be more of a regional dialect thing.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this audiobook during a sale and it sounded interesting. I’d read several of his works back in high school and wanted to dive deeper into Poe. The short stories and poems were what I was expecting, and I even found a few really good ones that I’d never heard of before. The two novels at the end of the book were a surprise. I listened to them quickly but will probably go back and listen to them again. Trying to get through his essays was a mistake. I listened to every single one and couldn’t tell you the subject of any of them. I feel like they brought down the whole book and made me enjoy it less. I would strongly recommend to skip them.

[Michael Messmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisitely deep escape to another era, written by a master, and wonderfully narrated!

[Craig Childs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omnibus audiobook that includes four previously released collections:

1. The Complete Stories and Poems (narrated by Jonathan Keeble and Peter Noble)
2. The Complete Essays (narrated by Peter Noble)
3. The Journal of Julius Rodman (narrated by Peter Nobel)
4. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (narrated by Peter Nobel)

A note on various editions of Poe's Collected Works:

This omnibus contains everything Poe wrote of consequence, and its table of contents matches what you usually find in hardcover 'Complete Works' editions.

It does not, however, include the ephemera that show up in recent digital e-books. For instance, it omits the following:

• The unfinished play Politian
• Correspondence (personal and professional)
• Published book reviews
• A smattering of magazine articles and pamphlets
• Works translated or edited by Poe but written by someone else

I highly recommend this audiobook for everyone except hardcore completists who really need to collect everything Poe ever wrote.