Le scarabée d'or, suivi de La lettre volée

by Edgar Allan Poe

91pages. 19,4x12,6x1cm. Poche. 91pages. 19,4x12,6x1cm. Poche.

Genres: France, Roman, Short Stories

91 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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

[Pau]

Je n'ai pas vraiment apprécié ce livre, heureusement la lecture fût rapide. Il est composé de 2 petites histoires intéressantes mais sans plus, on sent que c'est un livre d'époque avec des termes compliqué et du vocabulaires peut apprécier de nos jours.

[Garance]

La morale de l'histoire c'est que les hyperfixations ça a du bon

[n0tsachz]

mieux que l’autre
histoires plus accès mystères/enquêtes et des petits plots twists j’aime bien

[Canton]

Histoires étonnantes, pour ne pas dire ubuesques ou désopilantes et passionnantes ! Il y a du polar, de la fantaisie, de la science-fiction. Ravie de découvrir cet auteur sur le tard. Mon ouvrage contenait aussi "L'aventure sans pareille d'un certain Hans Pfall", un voyage terre-lune pensé au XIXe siecle avec moults détails scientifiques, scotchant !

[Alcina]

Univers charmant et bien décris, belles intrigues, mais rapidement résolu et brusquement ! Ceci dit des personnages intéressant, qui vous serez familiers puisqu'ils ont inspiré Sherlock et Waston !

[Zinette]

alaways enjoy Edgar Allan poe's stories , loved this one .

[Alain]

une (ou deux) histoire étrange qui me semble pourtant avoir bien vieillie.