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William Wilson & Bernice
"William Wilson" & "Bernice" by Edgar Allan Poe is one of his exciting short stories.This edition is a good introduction to the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
60 pages, Paperback
Published August 11, 2017
2 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,789 books28.7k 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 1, 2020
There are two versions of the short story Berenice the first was first written in 1835 for Southern Literary Messenger "Many readers were shocked by the violence in "Berenice" and complained to publisher Thomas W. White leading to an edited version eventually being published in 1840. The four removed paragraphs describe a scene where Egaeus visits Berenice before her burial and clearly sees that she is still alive as she moves her finger and smiles. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenic...)
Poe disagreed with the complaints. A month after "Berenice" was published, he wrote to White saying that many magazines achieved fame because of similar stories. Whether in bad taste or not, he said it was his goal to be appreciated, and "to be appreciated you must be read." He admitted, "I allow that it approaches the very verge of bad taste – but I will not sin quite so egregiously again." Even so, Poe also emphasized that its final judgment should come not from the taste of the reading public but on the circulation of the magazine. (Whalen, Terence. "Poe and the American Publishing Industry" as collected in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2001. p. 69.)
In William Wilson Poe explores the theme of duel or split personality disorder where two distinct personalities exist within the same person that each person has within themselves both the capacity for both good and evil. Written in 1838 this predates Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde written in 1886 by nearly 50 years.
Poe disagreed with the complaints. A month after "Berenice" was published, he wrote to White saying that many magazines achieved fame because of similar stories. Whether in bad taste or not, he said it was his goal to be appreciated, and "to be appreciated you must be read." He admitted, "I allow that it approaches the very verge of bad taste – but I will not sin quite so egregiously again." Even so, Poe also emphasized that its final judgment should come not from the taste of the reading public but on the circulation of the magazine. (Whalen, Terence. "Poe and the American Publishing Industry" as collected in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2001. p. 69.)
In William Wilson Poe explores the theme of duel or split personality disorder where two distinct personalities exist within the same person that each person has within themselves both the capacity for both good and evil. Written in 1838 this predates Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde written in 1886 by nearly 50 years.
May 8, 2022
This story has a lot of resemblance to other stories of Poe’s (eg. Ligeia). It is - unsurprisingly- a terribly intriguing read. I recommend this story to all Poe and dark story lovers.
May 1, 2023
Irgendwie verwirrend, düster und ekelhaft.
December 21, 2024
eh not my fav and ive read too many books ive liked more to give it 3 srars
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews