Der Goldkäfer: Unheimliche Geschichten

by Edgar Allan Poe

In dieser Sammlung seiner bekanntesten Erzählungen zeigt sich Poe als Meister der poetischen Komposition und des genau kalkulierten Effekts, als Wegbereiter des Detektiv-, Fantasy- und Science Fiction-Genres, der subtilen Horrorliteratur und als Urvater des Symbolismus und der American Gothic-Schule. Diese Ausgabe enthält: Der Goldkäfer, Eine Geschichte aus dem Felsengebirge, Der schwarze Kater, Das Fass Amontilladowein, Die Maske des roten Todes, Die Rache des Zwerges, Die Grube und das Pendel, Der alte Mann mit dem Geierauge, Die Mordtat in der Rue Morgue, Der gestohlene Brief, Bericht über den Fall Valdemar, Der Untergang des Hauses Usher, Metzengerstein, Ligeia, In der Tiefe des Maelstroms und William Wilson.

257 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 20, 2014

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

[Lennart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Manche Geschichten sind ganz gut, manche sind leider einfach langweilig. Finde es gibt auch zu viel Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Geschichten. Jede zweite Geschichte wird jemand irgendwo eingemauert. Bisschen enttäuscht leider. Die Grube und das Pendel hat mir am besten gefallen.

[Dominik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schätze Edgar Poe sehr dafür dass er Lovecraft, King und Co als Vorbild diente. Aber die meisten seiner Geschichten (insbesondere in dieser Sammlung) sind eher okay bis langweilig mit ein paar wenigen Highlights.

[XfeliX · Rating 4 out of 5]

Habe eigentlich die Knesebeck Graphic Novel gelesen, aber gibts hier nicht