Mystery Tales

by Edgar Allan Poe

Complete and unabridged collection. Contains:
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Oval Portrait
The Gold-Bug
The Black Cat
Ligeia
The Masque of the Red Death
William Wilson
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Purloined Letter

Genres: Horror, Mystery

188 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2003

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

[Sonia Pisano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adoro lo stile di scrittura di Poe, anche se a volte mi perdo a causa della sua tendenza di fare frasi chilometriche :frown:

[Sigi · Rating 2 out of 5]

nogal pretentieus geschreven maar wel coole motieven achter de verhalen

[Isabella · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Mystery Tales"
Edgar Allan Poe, various years

This little book is a collection of short stories written by E.A. Poe, which are focused on mysteries and strange events. Some of them are borderline horror - but it's Poe, so that was to be expected.
Despite not being the biggest fan of short stories (I prefer novels or at least novellas), I found myself thouroughly enjoying this precious gem. Some of the stories are better than others, but that goes accordingly to personal taste. Poe's writing is, however, always equisite and his imagination is unbelievably rich.
I'd recommend this collection to Poe's fans, to those who love horror and mystery stories and to those who just want to spend some quality time reading this genre.

[Natasha Glerup · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm absolutely in love. I can't understand how its taken me so long to finally read Poe the way he deserves to be read, but I'm glad I dived into it. Obviously, some stories I liked more than others, but I definitely have my eye on Barnes and Nobles Complete Poe leather bound goodie. Now to acquire the funds to buy more hardcover classics...