The Fall of the House of Usher & The Pit and the Pendulum

by Edgar Allan Poe, William Roberts (Narrator)

The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

Also in this collection of Poe's tales of mystery and "The Black Cat", "The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar", "The Cask of Amontillado", "Ligeia", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Premature Burial", and "The Raven".

Audible Audio

Published December 26, 2004

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

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pit and the Pendulum - in which there is a pit, a pendulum, some inquisitors, and rats.

Ligeia- a lady thinks she’s too cool to die and her husband is in firm agreement

Mask of the Red Death - celebrity covid party crasher makes a statement

Cask of amontillado - be more suspicious if your friend shows you he’s carrying a trowel

The black cat - animal cruelty has some bizarre consequences, there’s a cat named Pluto

The Raven - need I say never more?

The fall of the house of usher - this story has a great structure

M. Valdemar - hypnotizing dying people is not that interesting

The Premature Burial - starting to feel like EAP thinks catalepsy is really common

Tell tale heart - would make a great forensic files. Would love to see the reenactment

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

OG of scary. Absolutely spooky!

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I would have gotten more from reading these than listening. But there was still plenty of creepiness.