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The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories
A new, beautifully laid-out, easy-to-read edition of eight of Edgar Allan Poe's most beloved short stories. This edition Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is regarded as a central figure of American literature, as one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and the inventor of detective fiction and science fiction as respective genres.
464 pages, Hardcover
Published September 2, 2025
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
10.6k books29.5k followersThe 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
May 14, 2011
Well, that was a long, hard slog through a broad range of fiction, but it's finally over. And with it, I'm proud to say, I've completed my stack of classic fiction from the Great Writers Library! Thenk yew, thenk yew.
This book is probably the first time I've read Poe since high school (aside from occasionally running into The Raven). I saved it until last in this stack of books I've been reading, because I expected to really enjoy it. I was disappointed. Poe's painfully purple style and last-three-words twist endings clearly had a huge influence on the awful way I write, and were most likely The Shit to high-school Twilight-Zone-fan me, but I've definitely changed since then. Now, his writing is just painful, his casual references are long past dated and the way he delivers those twists is utterly comical. There are stories here ranging from classics ('Murders in the Rue Morgue,' 'Gold Bug,' 'Cask of Amontillado') to ones I'd never heard of ('William Wilson,' the dreadful and largely pointless 'Balloon Hoax'), from the best-known gothic-horror work like 'Fall of the House of Usher' to kind-of-funny humour writings like 'Some Words With a Mummy.' So, Poe's probably pretty well represented here.
Having read such a broad representation of his stuff now, I'm certain of one thing: I'll never do it again. I may hit a story or poem (his poetry is entirely unrepresented here) now and then, but I can't see myself going through another entire collection of his. This was, all things considered, a good collection of his short fiction, and I would recommend it to someone wanting to take the Poe plunge. I just wouldn't recommend reading him in the first place.
This book is probably the first time I've read Poe since high school (aside from occasionally running into The Raven). I saved it until last in this stack of books I've been reading, because I expected to really enjoy it. I was disappointed. Poe's painfully purple style and last-three-words twist endings clearly had a huge influence on the awful way I write, and were most likely The Shit to high-school Twilight-Zone-fan me, but I've definitely changed since then. Now, his writing is just painful, his casual references are long past dated and the way he delivers those twists is utterly comical. There are stories here ranging from classics ('Murders in the Rue Morgue,' 'Gold Bug,' 'Cask of Amontillado') to ones I'd never heard of ('William Wilson,' the dreadful and largely pointless 'Balloon Hoax'), from the best-known gothic-horror work like 'Fall of the House of Usher' to kind-of-funny humour writings like 'Some Words With a Mummy.' So, Poe's probably pretty well represented here.
Having read such a broad representation of his stuff now, I'm certain of one thing: I'll never do it again. I may hit a story or poem (his poetry is entirely unrepresented here) now and then, but I can't see myself going through another entire collection of his. This was, all things considered, a good collection of his short fiction, and I would recommend it to someone wanting to take the Poe plunge. I just wouldn't recommend reading him in the first place.
March 29, 2024
Some were brilliant but some were so fucking mid
March 30, 2026
Interminable regret has plagued me throughout my experience in reading Poe’s works.
Whilst one can appreciate his imagination, and the impact of his Gothic horror tales is obvious, one really must question the quality of his prose.
All too often, his best stories are merely 6 pages or less, and this is where his style shines best.
Should you find yourself accosted by a 10+ pager, be in no doubt that you will likely find it a slog.
Poe’s determination to explain the science of a hot-air balloon for instance, leads one to question the need for such explicit detail, especially when it serves no greater purpose than demonstrating Poe’s high opinion of his own intelligence. Furthermore, his structure and pace are more akin to that of an academic than an author.
An enjoyable read? As a whole, absolutely not. Do yourself a favour and read the classics as a standalone short story, and avoid anything that revolves around “the real world”.
Whilst one can appreciate his imagination, and the impact of his Gothic horror tales is obvious, one really must question the quality of his prose.
All too often, his best stories are merely 6 pages or less, and this is where his style shines best.
Should you find yourself accosted by a 10+ pager, be in no doubt that you will likely find it a slog.
Poe’s determination to explain the science of a hot-air balloon for instance, leads one to question the need for such explicit detail, especially when it serves no greater purpose than demonstrating Poe’s high opinion of his own intelligence. Furthermore, his structure and pace are more akin to that of an academic than an author.
An enjoyable read? As a whole, absolutely not. Do yourself a favour and read the classics as a standalone short story, and avoid anything that revolves around “the real world”.
April 19, 2026
I read the stories that I had not already read, and I find it a little difficult to rate the book as a whole. I love Poe, I love his poetry and I love some of his stories. But it was like walking through a quagmire wearing wellies, reading others.
But then again, several of them are deliciously creepy and so good, so I would still recommend the book if you enjoy dark and gothic reads.
But then again, several of them are deliciously creepy and so good, so I would still recommend the book if you enjoy dark and gothic reads.
November 1, 2024
honestly? the classics are classics for a reason, 100% recommend those, but the rest are definitely an acquired taste. very nice for spooky season
August 23, 2026
Poe was, above all things, an entertainer. He published his stories in serialized newspapers to build suspense, and sometimes published stories written as if they were actual events. I think the main purpose of most of his work was to freak people out and make money, but as I read his stories, many not for the first time, I just kept thinking of Poe himself, and this list kept forming in my mind.
Things that Make Edgar Allen Poe Fascinated But Also Anxious, In Order of How Successful I Think He Was At Writing Them:
1. Having a Guilty Conscience (aka men with shady pasts who become increasingly paranoid that those pasts are catching up to them, but it turns out it was all in their heads and they’ve been self-sabotaging this whole time.)
(“The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, “William Wilson”, and “The Man of the Crowd”)
This is the shit he lived for and, IMO, what he should primarily be remembered for. While “The Tell-Tale Heart” is obviously very famous (and perhaps the most successful due it is brevity and concision), I think we’re all sleeping on the other four. I mean “Man” would be in my personal top 5 for its opening paragraph alone- “now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave.” It goes so hard?? And the description of the cat’s howl in “The Black Cat” is singularly haunting. I’ve said on the record that I don’t find dopplegangers particularly scary, but “William Wilson” did creep me out more than I thought it would- like it walked so Jordan Peele’s Us could run. “Thou Art the Man” could also fit in this category, although it is mostly about a man being haunted by someone else’s crime that he is accused of because the real criminal is well-liked and persuasive while the innocent man has a checkered past and is unsociable (which may be an entirely different anxiety for Poe, a famously not well liked and unsociable man).
2. Having a Body (aka Visceral, primal horror)
(“The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Man That Was Used Up” and “The Premature Burial”)
These are the stories I feel most people reference when talking about Poe, and for good reason. I mean he was really ticking some universal horror boxes- from the spatial and temporal disorientation and visceral descriptions of food and the rats crawling all over it in “The Pit”, to disease that not even wealth and privilege can save you from in “Masque” and to some extent “The Sphinx”, to literally losing yourself piece by piece in “Man”, and finally, the grand daddy of them all- begin buried alive in both “Cask” and “Burial”. Nightmare-inducing, every one of them. “Mesmeric Revelation” and “M. Valdemar” also half-fit in this category, as the former is essentially a ghost telling the narrator how being a consciousness free from a body is “the ultimate life” and death is a metamorphosis whereby “the ultimate body escapes our rudimental senses” and in the latter a man’s body literally dissolves into disgusting goo, but I’ve given them a theme of their own later down.
3. Having a family, a home, and a legacy (aka Gothic horror)
(“The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Oval Portrait”, and “Metzengerstein”)
I’ve also said on the record that Poe is the only man who should be in the pantheon of Great Gothic Horror Writers, and I stand by that, but I also think that all of these stories would be even more horrific from the woman’s perspective. That being said, this was the first time I had ever read “The Oval Portrait”, and I don’t know why this one got me so good- I think there’s something about being alone in an unfamiliar house lit only by flickering candlelight when you catch sight of a portrait out of the corner of your eye and think for a split second that it's a person whose been standing in the shadows of your bedroom, watching you this whole time that I find to be such a simple, yet viscerally terrifying set up for scary short story. “Fall” is, obviously, the most famous in this category and it is also the best.
4. Having a wife who is both terrifying and fascinating and without whom my life is meaningless (aka I know I married a baddie, but is she secretly laughing at me??)
(“Bernice”, ”Morella”, ”Ligeia”, “Elenora”, and “The Oblong Box”)
While “Elenora”, and “Ligeia” are kind of forgettable, the endings of “Morella” and “Bernice” will definitely stick with me. A demon baby who (maybe?) possesses the soul of her dead mother come back to haunt her father, and discovering a box full of freshly pulled out teeth are the epitome of horror, IMO. “The Oblong Box” will probably be most memorable to me for the scene in which the main character sees his friend board a boat with a box measuring roughly 6 feet long by 2 feet wide- a box he is super shady about and is acting very out of character in general- and thinks “he’s probably got some paintings in there he doesn’t want me to know about”.
5. The Dubious Existence of an Afterlife (aka its all going to end!)
(“Mesmeric Revelation” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”)
What strikes me most about these stories, both of which are about mesmerists putting men into a trance as they die and witness the entire process, is the structure of scientific experimentation. Obviously, the spiritualist movement was just starting to take off when Poe died, so the idea that he was fascinated by mesmerism is not very surprising, but the calculated, academic process of trying to prove once and for all the existence of an afterlife speaks to his general disbelief, but kind of desperate hope that there might still be something even if it’s as existentially horrifying as being a consciousness free from a body. Also, if you can find these on audio they’re great- the voice actors almost always go hard on the death voices.
I would also add into this category “Mellonta Tauta,” Poe’s satirical sci-fi story taking place 1000 years in the future, where all contemporary human knowledge, culture, and history, is either destroyed or made ridiculous. In the end, even the letter which mocks the "primitives" is lost, and just becomes a message in a bottle thrown into the sea. This story seems more tongue-in-cheek than anything, but there is a layer of existential dread under the humour, a knowledge that one day, the present will be ancient history and everything we worked for will be gone.
6. Going Outside (aka Nature, like women, is terrifying and unknowable)
(“A Descent Into the Maelstrom”, and “Message Found in a Bottle”)
This one was an unexpected theme, since I had never really heard people talking about it in relation to Poe. His vivid descriptions of the storm and the waves are harrowing, especially in “Maelstrom”. “Message in a Bottle” was also great at this, but “Maelstrom” has a cleaner plot that leaves more room for the thrill and sheer terror of a man vs. nature story.
7. Non-White People (aka, the many traps of white supremacy got our problematic fave)
Though this theme is sadly present in many of his stories, I felt it most keenly while reading “The Gold-Bug.” I can’t help but feel like Poe writes about non-white people in a similar fashion to how he writes about women, except when he writes about women you can tell that, although he is terrified of them, he respects them at the same time. The women in his stories are brilliant and confident and mysterious, and though he is suspicious of them, he almost always puts that on himself. Like, he understands that he is a weird little guy and that he should be grateful to have this woman’s attention and the fact that he is scared is a personal failing. But when he writes about people of color, the suspicion of the Unknown Other is still there, but the respect is gone. He doesn’t fear non-white people in a physical sense- the characters are not murderers or stalkers- he fears their bumbling stupidity and child-like naivete messing up his life. He fears being forced to be responsible for an adult who is incapable of taking care of themselves. I often think about how Poe was one of those financially precarious/ downwardly mobile white people who fell hard for the propaganda campaign that if slavery were abolished, that Black people would come north and steal all their social capital. I think that fear was very real for him and you can see it in “The Gold-Bug” in particular. That being said, despite the historical reasons for this, the fact remains that these stories are rooted in racism and xenophobia and as such are not as profound or universal as his more successful stories.
Then there are two other categories of short stories which I don’t feel are as successful, probably because he wasn’t writing from a place of visceral fear, but more of an academic curiosity.
8. Poe was getting silly with form
(“Silence- A Fable”, “Shadow- A Parable”, “The Assignation”)
These were strange and very short and didn’t leave much of an impression beyond the thought that they almost feel the least commercial of all Poe’s works. For the most part, he was just trying to get paid, but these stories (and his poetry) feel the most like his artistic perspective. I do think his poetry is his best work, though.
9. Detective Mysteries
(“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”, “The Purloined Letter”, and “The Gold-Bug”)
As much as the “private detective who uses deduction to solve crimes with his sidekick” genre owes to these stories, I cannot help but feel that, even though Poe kind of invented it, it is just not his genre. He does not really craft a mystery all that well, and the fact that these stories are really more about the philosophy of deduction than crafting a compelling mystery makes them kind of a slog to get through. They are all very boring, and “The Gold-Bug”, is also pretty cringingly racist, which I already mentioned. It also isn’t even a murder mystery, which kind of makes it even more boring- he somehow crafts a pirate treasure story without any actual pirates or adventure. I was immersive-reading this book with a couple of audio book compilations and the only audio version of “Gold-Bug” I was able to find fully skipped, like, 4 completely unnecessary pages of the main character explaining how he figured out a cypher. It is, without a doubt, his worst work.
Other than the reviews of the stories themselves, I found this anthology a little odd. There wasn’t a whole lot of curation, no forward or afterward, and no contextual information. The stories are in publication order (which I only realized after I looked some of them up- again, there is no context to these stories at all, not even an accompanying original publication date), which I suppose makes sense, but a thematic grouping would have been more interesting to me, personally (and is in part why I wrote my review that way). Ending with “Mellonta Tauta” is particularly strange to me. Despite it being written just a few months before he died, it doesn’t feel at all like a culmination. Poe died unexpectedly and relatively young- he wasn’t reflecting on his life or his career. He was maybe starting to dip a toe into a new genre, but if he was, he only ever published the one. I just don’t know what there is really to glean from presenting his stories chronologically when his career only spanned 17 years and his style didn't change all that dramatically in that time. I think I would recommend seeking out a "greatest hits" collection that includes some of his poetry before diving into a volume like this, which presents some of the greatest works of Gothic literature right next to works which were clearly written just because the rent was due.
Things that Make Edgar Allen Poe Fascinated But Also Anxious, In Order of How Successful I Think He Was At Writing Them:
1. Having a Guilty Conscience (aka men with shady pasts who become increasingly paranoid that those pasts are catching up to them, but it turns out it was all in their heads and they’ve been self-sabotaging this whole time.)
(“The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, “William Wilson”, and “The Man of the Crowd”)
This is the shit he lived for and, IMO, what he should primarily be remembered for. While “The Tell-Tale Heart” is obviously very famous (and perhaps the most successful due it is brevity and concision), I think we’re all sleeping on the other four. I mean “Man” would be in my personal top 5 for its opening paragraph alone- “now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave.” It goes so hard?? And the description of the cat’s howl in “The Black Cat” is singularly haunting. I’ve said on the record that I don’t find dopplegangers particularly scary, but “William Wilson” did creep me out more than I thought it would- like it walked so Jordan Peele’s Us could run. “Thou Art the Man” could also fit in this category, although it is mostly about a man being haunted by someone else’s crime that he is accused of because the real criminal is well-liked and persuasive while the innocent man has a checkered past and is unsociable (which may be an entirely different anxiety for Poe, a famously not well liked and unsociable man).
2. Having a Body (aka Visceral, primal horror)
(“The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Man That Was Used Up” and “The Premature Burial”)
These are the stories I feel most people reference when talking about Poe, and for good reason. I mean he was really ticking some universal horror boxes- from the spatial and temporal disorientation and visceral descriptions of food and the rats crawling all over it in “The Pit”, to disease that not even wealth and privilege can save you from in “Masque” and to some extent “The Sphinx”, to literally losing yourself piece by piece in “Man”, and finally, the grand daddy of them all- begin buried alive in both “Cask” and “Burial”. Nightmare-inducing, every one of them. “Mesmeric Revelation” and “M. Valdemar” also half-fit in this category, as the former is essentially a ghost telling the narrator how being a consciousness free from a body is “the ultimate life” and death is a metamorphosis whereby “the ultimate body escapes our rudimental senses” and in the latter a man’s body literally dissolves into disgusting goo, but I’ve given them a theme of their own later down.
3. Having a family, a home, and a legacy (aka Gothic horror)
(“The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Oval Portrait”, and “Metzengerstein”)
I’ve also said on the record that Poe is the only man who should be in the pantheon of Great Gothic Horror Writers, and I stand by that, but I also think that all of these stories would be even more horrific from the woman’s perspective. That being said, this was the first time I had ever read “The Oval Portrait”, and I don’t know why this one got me so good- I think there’s something about being alone in an unfamiliar house lit only by flickering candlelight when you catch sight of a portrait out of the corner of your eye and think for a split second that it's a person whose been standing in the shadows of your bedroom, watching you this whole time that I find to be such a simple, yet viscerally terrifying set up for scary short story. “Fall” is, obviously, the most famous in this category and it is also the best.
4. Having a wife who is both terrifying and fascinating and without whom my life is meaningless (aka I know I married a baddie, but is she secretly laughing at me??)
(“Bernice”, ”Morella”, ”Ligeia”, “Elenora”, and “The Oblong Box”)
While “Elenora”, and “Ligeia” are kind of forgettable, the endings of “Morella” and “Bernice” will definitely stick with me. A demon baby who (maybe?) possesses the soul of her dead mother come back to haunt her father, and discovering a box full of freshly pulled out teeth are the epitome of horror, IMO. “The Oblong Box” will probably be most memorable to me for the scene in which the main character sees his friend board a boat with a box measuring roughly 6 feet long by 2 feet wide- a box he is super shady about and is acting very out of character in general- and thinks “he’s probably got some paintings in there he doesn’t want me to know about”.
5. The Dubious Existence of an Afterlife (aka its all going to end!)
(“Mesmeric Revelation” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”)
What strikes me most about these stories, both of which are about mesmerists putting men into a trance as they die and witness the entire process, is the structure of scientific experimentation. Obviously, the spiritualist movement was just starting to take off when Poe died, so the idea that he was fascinated by mesmerism is not very surprising, but the calculated, academic process of trying to prove once and for all the existence of an afterlife speaks to his general disbelief, but kind of desperate hope that there might still be something even if it’s as existentially horrifying as being a consciousness free from a body. Also, if you can find these on audio they’re great- the voice actors almost always go hard on the death voices.
I would also add into this category “Mellonta Tauta,” Poe’s satirical sci-fi story taking place 1000 years in the future, where all contemporary human knowledge, culture, and history, is either destroyed or made ridiculous. In the end, even the letter which mocks the "primitives" is lost, and just becomes a message in a bottle thrown into the sea. This story seems more tongue-in-cheek than anything, but there is a layer of existential dread under the humour, a knowledge that one day, the present will be ancient history and everything we worked for will be gone.
6. Going Outside (aka Nature, like women, is terrifying and unknowable)
(“A Descent Into the Maelstrom”, and “Message Found in a Bottle”)
This one was an unexpected theme, since I had never really heard people talking about it in relation to Poe. His vivid descriptions of the storm and the waves are harrowing, especially in “Maelstrom”. “Message in a Bottle” was also great at this, but “Maelstrom” has a cleaner plot that leaves more room for the thrill and sheer terror of a man vs. nature story.
7. Non-White People (aka, the many traps of white supremacy got our problematic fave)
Though this theme is sadly present in many of his stories, I felt it most keenly while reading “The Gold-Bug.” I can’t help but feel like Poe writes about non-white people in a similar fashion to how he writes about women, except when he writes about women you can tell that, although he is terrified of them, he respects them at the same time. The women in his stories are brilliant and confident and mysterious, and though he is suspicious of them, he almost always puts that on himself. Like, he understands that he is a weird little guy and that he should be grateful to have this woman’s attention and the fact that he is scared is a personal failing. But when he writes about people of color, the suspicion of the Unknown Other is still there, but the respect is gone. He doesn’t fear non-white people in a physical sense- the characters are not murderers or stalkers- he fears their bumbling stupidity and child-like naivete messing up his life. He fears being forced to be responsible for an adult who is incapable of taking care of themselves. I often think about how Poe was one of those financially precarious/ downwardly mobile white people who fell hard for the propaganda campaign that if slavery were abolished, that Black people would come north and steal all their social capital. I think that fear was very real for him and you can see it in “The Gold-Bug” in particular. That being said, despite the historical reasons for this, the fact remains that these stories are rooted in racism and xenophobia and as such are not as profound or universal as his more successful stories.
Then there are two other categories of short stories which I don’t feel are as successful, probably because he wasn’t writing from a place of visceral fear, but more of an academic curiosity.
8. Poe was getting silly with form
(“Silence- A Fable”, “Shadow- A Parable”, “The Assignation”)
These were strange and very short and didn’t leave much of an impression beyond the thought that they almost feel the least commercial of all Poe’s works. For the most part, he was just trying to get paid, but these stories (and his poetry) feel the most like his artistic perspective. I do think his poetry is his best work, though.
9. Detective Mysteries
(“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”, “The Purloined Letter”, and “The Gold-Bug”)
As much as the “private detective who uses deduction to solve crimes with his sidekick” genre owes to these stories, I cannot help but feel that, even though Poe kind of invented it, it is just not his genre. He does not really craft a mystery all that well, and the fact that these stories are really more about the philosophy of deduction than crafting a compelling mystery makes them kind of a slog to get through. They are all very boring, and “The Gold-Bug”, is also pretty cringingly racist, which I already mentioned. It also isn’t even a murder mystery, which kind of makes it even more boring- he somehow crafts a pirate treasure story without any actual pirates or adventure. I was immersive-reading this book with a couple of audio book compilations and the only audio version of “Gold-Bug” I was able to find fully skipped, like, 4 completely unnecessary pages of the main character explaining how he figured out a cypher. It is, without a doubt, his worst work.
Other than the reviews of the stories themselves, I found this anthology a little odd. There wasn’t a whole lot of curation, no forward or afterward, and no contextual information. The stories are in publication order (which I only realized after I looked some of them up- again, there is no context to these stories at all, not even an accompanying original publication date), which I suppose makes sense, but a thematic grouping would have been more interesting to me, personally (and is in part why I wrote my review that way). Ending with “Mellonta Tauta” is particularly strange to me. Despite it being written just a few months before he died, it doesn’t feel at all like a culmination. Poe died unexpectedly and relatively young- he wasn’t reflecting on his life or his career. He was maybe starting to dip a toe into a new genre, but if he was, he only ever published the one. I just don’t know what there is really to glean from presenting his stories chronologically when his career only spanned 17 years and his style didn't change all that dramatically in that time. I think I would recommend seeking out a "greatest hits" collection that includes some of his poetry before diving into a volume like this, which presents some of the greatest works of Gothic literature right next to works which were clearly written just because the rent was due.
April 10, 2024
Really liked: The Black Cat, Elenore, The Man That Was Used Up, The Gold-Bug, The Pit and the Pendulum
Notes for Self
• The Black Cat ✪✪✪✪ - Crazy Man, Poor Cat
• The Pit and the Pendulum ✪✪✪✪ – [mental]torture & horror / time-mortality
• The Tell-Tale Heart ✪✪✪.5 – insanity + paranoia + guilt
• The Fall of the House of Usher ✪✪✪.5
• A Descent into the Maelström ✪✪✪.5 - Whirlpool
• The Gold-Bug ✪✪✪.5 - treasure hunt + cipher
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue ✪✪✪.5 - murder mystery / sensitive-analytical-observative-intuitive perception to understanding people's trains of thoughts = detective Dupin
• The Cask of Amontillado ✪✪✪
• Elenore ✪✪✪ - Loved the poetic prose
• The Oblong Box ✪✪✪
• Berenice ✪✪✪ - Creepy protagonist, unreliable narrative, teeth
• MS. Found in a Bottle - ✪✪✪ storm-shipwreck-lost at sea-ghost ship-whirlpool
• The Man That Was Used Up ✪✪✪ - I found this humorous /satirical
• William Wilson ✪✪✪ - double nature / split identity (moral vs. immoral / conscience-alter ego / steady shift in morality-deteriorating relationship with his doppelganger)
• ‘Thou Art The Man’ ✪✪✪ - comical detective story
• The Masque of the Red Death ✪✪.5
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdermar ✪✪.5 - Eeewwww!
• The Oval Portrait ✪✪.5
• The Assignation ✪✪.5
• Morella ✪✪.5 - attraction vs. repulsion, enhancing intellect vs. physical deterioration
• Ligeia ✪✪.5 - Gothic love story
• The Mystery of Marie Roget ✪✪.5 - murder mystery / detective Dupin / unsolved
• The Purloined Letter ✪✪ .5 - detective Dupin / stolen letter
• Mellonta Tauta ✪✪ - Set in future, satirical, mash up of past, incorrect spelling of people & places/comical
• Metzengerstein ✪✪ - Rival/feuding families, prophecy/curse, metempsychosis/reincarnation
• The Man of the Crowd ✪.5 – People watching, follow a weird stranger/pointless
Quotes
Mesmeric Revelation: “To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.”
Metzengerstein: “Pestis eram vivus - moriens tua mors ero. / "Living, I was your plague - dying, I shall be your death.” ~Martin Luther
Ligeia: “in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.”
The Purloined Letter: "Il y a à parier que toute idée publique, toute convention reçue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre." / "It is safe to wager that every public idea and every accepted convention is sheer foolishness, because it has suited the majority." ~Nicolas Chamfort
Notes for Self
• The Black Cat ✪✪✪✪ - Crazy Man, Poor Cat
• The Pit and the Pendulum ✪✪✪✪ – [mental]torture & horror / time-mortality
• The Tell-Tale Heart ✪✪✪.5 – insanity + paranoia + guilt
• The Fall of the House of Usher ✪✪✪.5
• A Descent into the Maelström ✪✪✪.5 - Whirlpool
• The Gold-Bug ✪✪✪.5 - treasure hunt + cipher
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue ✪✪✪.5 - murder mystery / sensitive-analytical-observative-intuitive perception to understanding people's trains of thoughts = detective Dupin
• The Cask of Amontillado ✪✪✪
• Elenore ✪✪✪ - Loved the poetic prose
• The Oblong Box ✪✪✪
• Berenice ✪✪✪ - Creepy protagonist, unreliable narrative, teeth
• MS. Found in a Bottle - ✪✪✪ storm-shipwreck-lost at sea-ghost ship-whirlpool
• The Man That Was Used Up ✪✪✪ - I found this humorous /satirical
• William Wilson ✪✪✪ - double nature / split identity (moral vs. immoral / conscience-alter ego / steady shift in morality-deteriorating relationship with his doppelganger)
• ‘Thou Art The Man’ ✪✪✪ - comical detective story
• The Masque of the Red Death ✪✪.5
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdermar ✪✪.5 - Eeewwww!
• The Oval Portrait ✪✪.5
• The Assignation ✪✪.5
• Morella ✪✪.5 - attraction vs. repulsion, enhancing intellect vs. physical deterioration
• Ligeia ✪✪.5 - Gothic love story
• The Mystery of Marie Roget ✪✪.5 - murder mystery / detective Dupin / unsolved
• The Purloined Letter ✪✪ .5 - detective Dupin / stolen letter
• Mellonta Tauta ✪✪ - Set in future, satirical, mash up of past, incorrect spelling of people & places/comical
• Metzengerstein ✪✪ - Rival/feuding families, prophecy/curse, metempsychosis/reincarnation
• The Man of the Crowd ✪.5 – People watching, follow a weird stranger/pointless
Quotes
Mesmeric Revelation: “To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.”
Metzengerstein: “Pestis eram vivus - moriens tua mors ero. / "Living, I was your plague - dying, I shall be your death.” ~Martin Luther
Ligeia: “in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.”
The Purloined Letter: "Il y a à parier que toute idée publique, toute convention reçue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre." / "It is safe to wager that every public idea and every accepted convention is sheer foolishness, because it has suited the majority." ~Nicolas Chamfort
August 1, 2024
Perhaps a version issue, but it really annoyed me that there were no explanatory notes (not even a glossary), especially for obscure references.
Maybe it's my fault that I don't know what Metempsychosis or a simoom or one of the thousand other references is, but having to look up meanings every 5 minutes made reading this way less fun :(
Maybe it's my fault that I don't know what Metempsychosis or a simoom or one of the thousand other references is, but having to look up meanings every 5 minutes made reading this way less fun :(
March 26, 2024
I... Really didn't like Poe's prose. It's a shame. He's written some of my favourite poems. But I find his stories to be... Condescending.
I started this collection full of excitement. Genuinely, poems like Annabel Lee have made a huge impact on me, and I was taken aback when I realised I had never read any of his stories. Now I kind of wish I never had.
To be honest, I completely understand that this is completely a matter of opinion. Although, I can't help feeling that many of those who preach his genius are enamoured by his complex language, and feel themselves more intelligent for being able to understand it, without seeing that each paragraph could be written much shorter, and likely with much more emotional impact. I believe Hemingway made a similar criticism of William Faulkner. But many people love William Faulkner. As they do Edgar Allan Poe. So who am I to judge?
Admittedly, as the collection went on, the writing became more palatable to me, and I almost went for three stars. Some of the characters became more interesting, the stories more entertaining, and the ideas more compelling. Or maybe I just got used to the writing. Who knows.
But then the last story came along. Mellonta Tauta. A dystopian piece of fiction written from the perspective of someone 1000 years from when Edgar Allan Poe wrote it. And, like most dystopias, it's meant to be a warning. But unlike Margaret Atwood's frustrated defeatism, George Orwell's hope-against-the-odds, and Aldous Huxley's confused amusement (admittedly haven't finished Brave New World yet, may change my mind on that), Mellonta Tauta drips with an arrogant condescendance, which just reeks of 'if I, Edgar Allan Poe, were the boss, all would be right'. And it really rubbed me up the wrong way.
In addition, the opening paragraph: "I am going to punish you for your impertinences by being as tedious, as discursive, as incoherent, and as unsatisfactory as possible." Felt to me like an admission of guiltless responsibility. Absolutely, I have many impertinences. No, it is not your job to punish me for them, Mr Poe. So I'll thank you to stop flashing your unnecessarily complex vocabulary at me, please.
I started this collection full of excitement. Genuinely, poems like Annabel Lee have made a huge impact on me, and I was taken aback when I realised I had never read any of his stories. Now I kind of wish I never had.
To be honest, I completely understand that this is completely a matter of opinion. Although, I can't help feeling that many of those who preach his genius are enamoured by his complex language, and feel themselves more intelligent for being able to understand it, without seeing that each paragraph could be written much shorter, and likely with much more emotional impact. I believe Hemingway made a similar criticism of William Faulkner. But many people love William Faulkner. As they do Edgar Allan Poe. So who am I to judge?
Admittedly, as the collection went on, the writing became more palatable to me, and I almost went for three stars. Some of the characters became more interesting, the stories more entertaining, and the ideas more compelling. Or maybe I just got used to the writing. Who knows.
But then the last story came along. Mellonta Tauta. A dystopian piece of fiction written from the perspective of someone 1000 years from when Edgar Allan Poe wrote it. And, like most dystopias, it's meant to be a warning. But unlike Margaret Atwood's frustrated defeatism, George Orwell's hope-against-the-odds, and Aldous Huxley's confused amusement (admittedly haven't finished Brave New World yet, may change my mind on that), Mellonta Tauta drips with an arrogant condescendance, which just reeks of 'if I, Edgar Allan Poe, were the boss, all would be right'. And it really rubbed me up the wrong way.
In addition, the opening paragraph: "I am going to punish you for your impertinences by being as tedious, as discursive, as incoherent, and as unsatisfactory as possible." Felt to me like an admission of guiltless responsibility. Absolutely, I have many impertinences. No, it is not your job to punish me for them, Mr Poe. So I'll thank you to stop flashing your unnecessarily complex vocabulary at me, please.
May 24, 2025
This compact hardback from the Great Writers Library contains 39 of Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
I'm glad I was spacing them out as part of my reading a story a day schedule as to read this book straight through would be a lot and in places a struggle.
The quality of the writing is very up and down with some tales aging better than others.
There are the classics which are well known for good reason. The Murders In The Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and The Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia and Hop-Frog which deserve a place in any short story collection. Atmospheric tales full of vivid imagery.
But there are too many stories where Poe's purple prose runs away from him, vast interminable passages of description or irrelevant facts to wade through to get to the point of the tale and several with twists at the end which are so contrived or obvious as to be comical instead of giving the sense of shock or terror desired. And there are a small number which are barely stories at all. More mood pieces of atmosphere and description almost becoming magazine articles rather than carrying a plot.
Thankfully there's enough here to make the book worthwhile and maybe an edition that includes his poetry to break things up a bit would have been better.
I'm glad I was spacing them out as part of my reading a story a day schedule as to read this book straight through would be a lot and in places a struggle.
The quality of the writing is very up and down with some tales aging better than others.
There are the classics which are well known for good reason. The Murders In The Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and The Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia and Hop-Frog which deserve a place in any short story collection. Atmospheric tales full of vivid imagery.
But there are too many stories where Poe's purple prose runs away from him, vast interminable passages of description or irrelevant facts to wade through to get to the point of the tale and several with twists at the end which are so contrived or obvious as to be comical instead of giving the sense of shock or terror desired. And there are a small number which are barely stories at all. More mood pieces of atmosphere and description almost becoming magazine articles rather than carrying a plot.
Thankfully there's enough here to make the book worthwhile and maybe an edition that includes his poetry to break things up a bit would have been better.
September 23, 2024
My overall average for the 22 short stories I read from this collection: 3.5
I think Poe is at his best when he leans into the themes of death and grief. The Tell Tale Heart, A Premature Burial, The Cask of Amontillado. Those were my absolute favorites!
I found that I tended to enjoy the works from him from the 1840s, and less so from his earlier works.
I liked seeing his detective character and learning that it came before Poirot and Holmes. Unfortunately, I only liked the orangutang one of the detective/investigative type stories.
It got to a point where I felt I had read all of the best ones (I was jumping around and not reading linearly) and had no interest in going through the ramblings of others I wasn't enjoying. What I truly wanted was to read all the horror-based ones for spooky season and those were surely my favorite of this collection.
I'm glad to have finally read more from Poe outside of The Raven (which nearly every kid in the US learned in school). Also, I bought this version I have in Venice, Italy, so it's always going to hold a special place in my heart.
I think Poe is at his best when he leans into the themes of death and grief. The Tell Tale Heart, A Premature Burial, The Cask of Amontillado. Those were my absolute favorites!
I found that I tended to enjoy the works from him from the 1840s, and less so from his earlier works.
I liked seeing his detective character and learning that it came before Poirot and Holmes. Unfortunately, I only liked the orangutang one of the detective/investigative type stories.
It got to a point where I felt I had read all of the best ones (I was jumping around and not reading linearly) and had no interest in going through the ramblings of others I wasn't enjoying. What I truly wanted was to read all the horror-based ones for spooky season and those were surely my favorite of this collection.
I'm glad to have finally read more from Poe outside of The Raven (which nearly every kid in the US learned in school). Also, I bought this version I have in Venice, Italy, so it's always going to hold a special place in my heart.
December 30, 2025
3.5⭐️ overall
Metzengerstein | 4⭐️
Ms. Found in a Bottle | 5⭐️
Silence - A Fable | 1⭐️
The Assignation | 4⭐️
Shadow - A Parable | 2⭐️
Berenice | 4⭐️
Morella | 3.5⭐️
Ligeia | 5⭐️
The Fall of the House of Usher | 5⭐️
The Man That Was Used Up | 4.5⭐️
William Wilson | 2⭐️
The Man of the Crowd | 3⭐️
A Descent into the Maelstrom | 2.5⭐️
The Murders in the Rue Morgue | 5⭐️
Eleonora | 2⭐️
The Mystery of Marie Roget | 3⭐️
The Pit and the Pendulum | 3⭐️
The Masque of the Red Death | 3.5⭐️
The Oval Portrait | 4⭐️
The Gold-Bug | 4.5⭐️
The Black Cat | 5⭐️
The Telltale Heart | 5⭐️
The Purloined Letter | 5⭐️
Mesmeric Revelation | 1⭐️
The Premature Burial | 4.5⭐️
‘Thou Art The Man’ | 4⭐️
The Oblong Box | 4⭐️
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar | 4⭐️
The Cask of Amontillado | 4⭐️
The Sphinx | 4.5⭐️
Mellonta Tauta | 3⭐️
Metzengerstein | 4⭐️
Ms. Found in a Bottle | 5⭐️
Silence - A Fable | 1⭐️
The Assignation | 4⭐️
Shadow - A Parable | 2⭐️
Berenice | 4⭐️
Morella | 3.5⭐️
Ligeia | 5⭐️
The Fall of the House of Usher | 5⭐️
The Man That Was Used Up | 4.5⭐️
William Wilson | 2⭐️
The Man of the Crowd | 3⭐️
A Descent into the Maelstrom | 2.5⭐️
The Murders in the Rue Morgue | 5⭐️
Eleonora | 2⭐️
The Mystery of Marie Roget | 3⭐️
The Pit and the Pendulum | 3⭐️
The Masque of the Red Death | 3.5⭐️
The Oval Portrait | 4⭐️
The Gold-Bug | 4.5⭐️
The Black Cat | 5⭐️
The Telltale Heart | 5⭐️
The Purloined Letter | 5⭐️
Mesmeric Revelation | 1⭐️
The Premature Burial | 4.5⭐️
‘Thou Art The Man’ | 4⭐️
The Oblong Box | 4⭐️
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar | 4⭐️
The Cask of Amontillado | 4⭐️
The Sphinx | 4.5⭐️
Mellonta Tauta | 3⭐️
January 4, 2026
Wow. Such a hard read. I was expecting more, but for the most part I was left feeling like I was slugging through the mud to get to the gold. Obviously, the classics are a beautiful read but his lesser known works are just HARD to get through. I recommend buying his BETTER known works over this book as there was A LOT of hard-to-get-through moments. I have read many hard-to-get-through books but this one is up there with the hardest. I would have given it 1 star but it felt unfair considering some of his most beautiful works are in this book, a somewhat deserved 2 stars felt fair.
December 26, 2023
Love most of the stories but it took me a really long time to read this since I am not used to reading old English. It is interesting to see how old stories looked like, how they were paced. There were some really interesting word choices that we don't really use anymore. There are quite a few really thrilling stories that sent a chill down my spine. Especially loved The Fall of the House of Usher.
December 22, 2025
I was so bored. I have read a few of the other stories so those came as no surprise but man I was really hoping I would like The Fall of the House of Usher because I liked the Netflix show. But I was so bored and uninterested. I wasn't a fan of some of the other stories either. I just wanted to get to the end and be done.
November 3, 2024
While there are some absolutely brilliant stories, the fall of the house of usher, the black cat, the murders in the Rue Morgue, the Pit and the pendulum, the Tell tale Heart, The Oblong box, the Premature Burial, others are not quite at the same standard and and seem rushed at times.
July 23, 2025
Short stories. Some good! Some not.
October 19, 2025
My man Poe knows how to write dense walls of text
January 27, 2024
[EN]
This book was my first contact with Edgar Allan Poe and, perhaps, the fact that I read it in English was not the best option for me. It is written in old English and I had a hard time getting into the stories. Anyway, I would like to reread some of the stories in the future.
The whole thing is interesting, seeing the rhythm of the stories and how they are constructed, quite slowly and with special attention to the atmosphere. If all the stories that make up this compilation have something in common, it is a disturbing and disconcerting atmosphere.
Some of the stories, it must be said, have been a bit boring to me. I'm not sure if it's because of the conflict that Old English has caused me or if it's because of the story itself. Although the atmosphere is still there, I felt like nothing interesting enough was happening to keep me in.
The story that stands out the most is, precisely, the one that gives the compilation its title: “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I recommend you to read it, even if it is independently.
I think that, in the future, I will reread all the stories and, without a doubt, I will continue reading the author.
[ES]
Este libro ha sido mi primer contacto con Edgar Allan Poe y, tal vez, el hecho de que fuese en inglés no ha sido la mejor opción para mí. Está escrito en inglés antiguo y me ha costado adentrarme en los relatos. De todos modos, me gustaría releer, en un futuro, algunos de los relatos.
El conjunto es interesante, ver el ritmo de las historias y cómo están construidas, de forma bastante pausada y con una atención especial a la atmósfera. Si algo tienen en común todos los relatos que conforman este recopilatorio es una atmósfera inquietante y desconcertante.
Alguno de los relatos, cabe decir, me han resultado un tanto aburridos. No tengo claro si por el conflicto que me ha supuesto el inglés antiguo o si por la propia historia en sí. Aunque la atmósfera sigue estando ahí, sentía que no ocurría nada lo suficientemente interesante cómo para mantenerme dentro.
El relato que más destaco es, precisamente, el que le da título al recopilatorio: “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Os recomiendo leerlo, aunque sea de forma independiente.
Creo que, en un futuro, voy a releer todos los relatos y, sin duda, voy a seguir leyendo al autor.
This book was my first contact with Edgar Allan Poe and, perhaps, the fact that I read it in English was not the best option for me. It is written in old English and I had a hard time getting into the stories. Anyway, I would like to reread some of the stories in the future.
The whole thing is interesting, seeing the rhythm of the stories and how they are constructed, quite slowly and with special attention to the atmosphere. If all the stories that make up this compilation have something in common, it is a disturbing and disconcerting atmosphere.
Some of the stories, it must be said, have been a bit boring to me. I'm not sure if it's because of the conflict that Old English has caused me or if it's because of the story itself. Although the atmosphere is still there, I felt like nothing interesting enough was happening to keep me in.
The story that stands out the most is, precisely, the one that gives the compilation its title: “The Fall of the House of Usher.” I recommend you to read it, even if it is independently.
I think that, in the future, I will reread all the stories and, without a doubt, I will continue reading the author.
[ES]
Este libro ha sido mi primer contacto con Edgar Allan Poe y, tal vez, el hecho de que fuese en inglés no ha sido la mejor opción para mí. Está escrito en inglés antiguo y me ha costado adentrarme en los relatos. De todos modos, me gustaría releer, en un futuro, algunos de los relatos.
El conjunto es interesante, ver el ritmo de las historias y cómo están construidas, de forma bastante pausada y con una atención especial a la atmósfera. Si algo tienen en común todos los relatos que conforman este recopilatorio es una atmósfera inquietante y desconcertante.
Alguno de los relatos, cabe decir, me han resultado un tanto aburridos. No tengo claro si por el conflicto que me ha supuesto el inglés antiguo o si por la propia historia en sí. Aunque la atmósfera sigue estando ahí, sentía que no ocurría nada lo suficientemente interesante cómo para mantenerme dentro.
El relato que más destaco es, precisamente, el que le da título al recopilatorio: “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Os recomiendo leerlo, aunque sea de forma independiente.
Creo que, en un futuro, voy a releer todos los relatos y, sin duda, voy a seguir leyendo al autor.
September 14, 2016
You know how it is… browsing at the library, you see a title that seems familiar, something that you meant to read at some stage because it’s listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die…
The Fall of the House of Usher is classic horror, a short story that has muscled its way into 1001 Books (a canon which is supposed to be confined to novels) because
it is simply impossible to imagine the modern novel without considering Poe’s masterful writing, and this seminal tale in particular. (p.111)
Well, the good thing about bringing home this collection is that I have knocked off three titles from 1001 Books in the space of an hour, because there are two other short stories honoured by inclusion in the list. 1001 Books tosses around epithets such as gifted writer; incredible legacy; and with significance as indisputable as artworks so diverse as Borges’s tales, The Name of the Rose, and The Usual Suspects. If you are a fan of the horror genre, you will presumably agree, but these stories just made me laugh.
To read my brief reviews of 3 stories from this collection please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/09/14/t...
The Fall of the House of Usher is classic horror, a short story that has muscled its way into 1001 Books (a canon which is supposed to be confined to novels) because
it is simply impossible to imagine the modern novel without considering Poe’s masterful writing, and this seminal tale in particular. (p.111)
Well, the good thing about bringing home this collection is that I have knocked off three titles from 1001 Books in the space of an hour, because there are two other short stories honoured by inclusion in the list. 1001 Books tosses around epithets such as gifted writer; incredible legacy; and with significance as indisputable as artworks so diverse as Borges’s tales, The Name of the Rose, and The Usual Suspects. If you are a fan of the horror genre, you will presumably agree, but these stories just made me laugh.
To read my brief reviews of 3 stories from this collection please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2016/09/14/t...
November 17, 2024
Review is for audiobook. BJ reads the Fall of the House of Usher and other stories. Could not find the actual version that I listened to on here. But this is the picture on the 'cover'.
Narrator- very good. I'm wondering if some of the audio was older as some stories were of lesser audio quality. There was no pause between stories. Quick title read and narrator was off and running. It made it hard to tell when new stories began. There was no chapter/story delineation- there was no way to find a story that you want to listen to. Or skip to the next one. There was no list of stories. I thought The Black Cat was on here. But I never heard it.
The audiobook seemed to jump around a bit. (I did not have it on shuffle). It skipped a whole section and I had to go back to search for it.
Stories of course were good. Poe is a bit wordy ;-) The nautical ones were difficult to follow at times as I am not up to 'date' on 1800's nautical terminology. The detective ones also had long expositions that were hard to concentrate on.
Narrator- very good. I'm wondering if some of the audio was older as some stories were of lesser audio quality. There was no pause between stories. Quick title read and narrator was off and running. It made it hard to tell when new stories began. There was no chapter/story delineation- there was no way to find a story that you want to listen to. Or skip to the next one. There was no list of stories. I thought The Black Cat was on here. But I never heard it.
The audiobook seemed to jump around a bit. (I did not have it on shuffle). It skipped a whole section and I had to go back to search for it.
Stories of course were good. Poe is a bit wordy ;-) The nautical ones were difficult to follow at times as I am not up to 'date' on 1800's nautical terminology. The detective ones also had long expositions that were hard to concentrate on.
January 30, 2018
I've been dipping in and out of this between other books for some time now, but finally decided to put some effort in and complete it.
As with any collection of short stories, it's a little inconsistent and - at it's best - would receive a full five stars. However, I have two major criticisms which have meant that it receives a lower rating.
Firstly, there are a number of stories in the collection where the prose is rather too dense to allow the narrative to flow smoothly. Quite simply, reading becomes hard work and unpicking the plot from the denseness of the description is arduous.
Secondly, Poe does has a tendency to spend too long creating the world for his tales at the beginning of the story. This means that the actual story and pay-off are disproportionately small in comparison with the time set establishing the scene.
Nevertheless, Poe is an incredibly important writer, and, at his best, his writing does stand the test of time and is enjoyable to read.
As with any collection of short stories, it's a little inconsistent and - at it's best - would receive a full five stars. However, I have two major criticisms which have meant that it receives a lower rating.
Firstly, there are a number of stories in the collection where the prose is rather too dense to allow the narrative to flow smoothly. Quite simply, reading becomes hard work and unpicking the plot from the denseness of the description is arduous.
Secondly, Poe does has a tendency to spend too long creating the world for his tales at the beginning of the story. This means that the actual story and pay-off are disproportionately small in comparison with the time set establishing the scene.
Nevertheless, Poe is an incredibly important writer, and, at his best, his writing does stand the test of time and is enjoyable to read.
March 6, 2024
There's a surprising amount of Poe works I've never read, so this was a great collection to come across. I enjoyed the narrator and the wide range of what was included, both stories and poetry.
A downside was the way the audiobook was put together. It seemed to be made of two or three separate collections squashed together (instead of being a single, cohesive bunch) so the transition between stories/collections was sometimes jarring.
There were also a few stories I was confused by. I couldn't figure out what they were about or what the endings meant. Perhaps they'd be clearer if I'd read them or maybe I wouldn't understand them either way. I'm voracious but not the most literary reader and some concepts do go over my head.
Overall, some weird stories, some confusing ones, but most were horrific or creepy in some way.
A downside was the way the audiobook was put together. It seemed to be made of two or three separate collections squashed together (instead of being a single, cohesive bunch) so the transition between stories/collections was sometimes jarring.
There were also a few stories I was confused by. I couldn't figure out what they were about or what the endings meant. Perhaps they'd be clearer if I'd read them or maybe I wouldn't understand them either way. I'm voracious but not the most literary reader and some concepts do go over my head.
Overall, some weird stories, some confusing ones, but most were horrific or creepy in some way.
April 8, 2024
A collection of horribly dry stories, most of which boil down to a tricky situation and some kind of supposed ingenious solution. Made it to the end of Hans Pfall before I decided to stop torturing myself with this book.
October 1, 2018
I just read The Fall of the House of Usher from this book... It was for a challenge. I'll read the others at another time.
December 28, 2024
An enjoyable reread / relisten of some classic tales by the original master of Horror.
March 8, 2025
no notes (some notes, but negligible ones at best)
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