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The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
A fully revised collection of Poe's work
The first new edition of this landmark anthology since 1945 presents a more complicated, perverse, and culturally engaged Poe. Along with the author's familiar masterworks in poetry and fiction, this new Portable Poe includes satirical tales that reflect his critique of American culture.
672 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1945
297 people are currently reading
2567 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,885 books28.6k 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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January 19, 2024
The “Portable Library” volumes from Viking Press seek to provide, for the general reader, a relatively quick and accessible introduction to the works of great authors – and has done so since novelist and critic Malcolm Cowley of Viking Press edited and published The Portable Hemingway (1944). Like Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe early became a candidate for inclusion in the Viking Portable Library, and to this day The Portable Edgar Allan Poe (1945) provides a particularly helpful introduction to the Boston-born, Richmond-raised author who may be the most important writer in American literary history.
It is not a coincidence that these early entries in the Viking Portable Library series have World War II-era publication dates. The historical context out of which the Viking Portable Library emerged was unmistakably a wartime context; the Portable Library got its start in a 1943 series titled As You Were. The military-style title, referring as it does to the command by which soldiers standing at attention are told by an officer that they can resume a more relaxed posture, speaks to the intended audience and purpose of these books as A Portable Library of American Prose and Poetry Assembled for Members of the Armed Forces and Merchant Marine.
It is heartening to think that, in the midst of a hideous and all-consuming war, both civilian publishers and high-ranking military officers felt that it was worthwhile to encourage the reading of American literature by members of the American armed forces. That literature is, after all, an outgrowth of a democratic culture and a democratic society, and it is good that it was being made available to the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who were then being asked to fight for democracy.
In the case of The Portable Poe, the person who was asked to choose from among Poe’s works, and to frame them with commentary that would help an audience of both soldiers and civilians, was Philip Van Doren Stern. Today, Stern is best known for two things: his Civil War histories, which one still sees in reprint editions at Barnes & Noble or Books-a-Million; and his 1944 Christmas story “The Greatest Gift,” adapted by director Frank Capra into the film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).
Yet Stern was also a gifted editor with a thoroughgoing knowledge of American literary history, and he brought those gifts to bear in putting together The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. He begins The Portable Poe by publishing 25 of Poe’s letters; the letters cover the period from 1827 to 1849 (or, from just after Poe’s 18th birthday through his mysterious death at age 40), and convey the often tragic and difficult trajectory of Poe’s life.
Having thus dealt with biographical details, Stern goes on to consider Poe’s stories, grouping them around five themes that were important to Poe: “Fantasy,” “Terror,” “Death,” “Revenge and Murder,” and “Mystery and Ratiocination.” In each case, Stern’s framing introduction does much to help the reader perceive thematic threads that bind together Poe’s often challenging (and, sometimes, seemingly self-contradictory) work.
Stern’s perspectives regarding Poe’s work help the reader to see familiar stories in new and unfamiliar ways. For instance, Stern introduces the “On Terror” section by suggesting that “Any man who writes of terror must be peculiarly susceptible to fear. Poe was a frightened creature, afraid of a hostile world, but most of all, afraid of the dreadful images that lurked in his own mind. Out of his own fears and his own nightmares came the stuff from which he made his stories” (119).
These ideas seem applicable to easily-overlooked passages from well-known Poe stories; in “The Pit and the Pendulum,” for example, the narrator, a captive of the Spanish Inquisition, remarks at one point that “By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me” (161).
Similarly, Stern frames the section “On Death” with an assertion that death “was Poe’s favorite subject, the idea he was most obsessed with, so that nearly all his work consists of variations on this single theme. No American writer has dwelt so consistently on the subject, delved into it so deeply, and made death’s doings his own to the extent that Poe did” (p. 191). The relevance of Stern’s words is clear in a tale like “Ligeia” – the story that Poe declared to be his favorite from among all his tales.
The title character of "Ligeia," the beautiful and brilliant wife of the story’s first-person narrator, responds to the knowledge of her imminent and premature demise by looking to conquering Death and asking, “[S]hall this Conqueror be not once conquered?...Who – who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly,, save only through the weakness of his feeble will” (p. 234; emphasis in original). What follows is what may be the most definitive of Poe’s “revenant” tales, exploring the question of whether Ligeia’s strength of will can overcome death itself.
There were times when I disagreed with Stern’s claims regarding Poe. He introduces the section of stories “Of Revenge and Murder” by claiming that “There was a sadistic streak in [Poe]…a malicious and wanton desire to hurt others for the perverse satisfaction it gave him” (p. 288). This way of thinking, to my mind, sounds all too much like editor Rufus Griswold’s post-mortem attacks on Poe’s reputation. From the fact that Poe wrote about revenge and murder, it does not follow that Poe was disposed toward revenge and murder. Indeed, the historical record indicates that those who best knew Poe were most appreciative of his courtly and kind personality, and admired his dedication to the craft of writing.
And Poe stories like “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” work as moral tales, showing how acts of murder and revenge destroy their perpetrators. Even “The Cask of Amontillado” – ostensibly the story of a man who gets away with a cruel revenge – shows that the revenger, Montresor, is haunted by what he did to the unlucky Fortunato; a close reading of the story shows that Montresor is confessing to a priest – “You, who so well know the nature of my soul” (p. 309). Fifty years after committing “the perfect crime,” Montresor is still trying to tell himself that he felt no remorse at walling up Fortunato in an underground catacomb: “My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so” (p. 317). No, Montresor, it wasn’t the dampness of the catacombs: it’s your conscience letting you know that when you walled up your enemy, you committed a live burial of your own heart. You will never escape what you did.
Stern is on firmer ground when he talks about Poe’s stories “Of Mystery and Ratiocination,” suggesting that “When [Poe] created the character of his detective, C. Auguste Dupin, he projected an idealization of himself as he would like to have been – a cool, infallible thinking machine that brought the power of reason to bear on all of life’s problems and triumphantly solved them” (p. 330). That quality of Dupin as a wish-fulfillment projection of Poe’s fantasy life comes forth in a story like “The Purloined Letter,” in which Dupin points out the errors in the thinking of the Prefect of the Parisian Police – “[H]e perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand” (p. 450) – but then uses his own ratiocinative skills to help the Prefect by foiling a blackmailer’s plot against the French royal family.
Stern also include examples of Poe’s articles, criticism, poems, and opinions. With regard to “The Philosophy of Composition,” the essay in which Poe famously claimed to set forth the exact process by which he wrote “The Raven” – “It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition – that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem” (pp. 551-52) – Stern writes that the essay “is fascinating – if the reader does not take it too seriously”, and wonders aloud “whether [Poe] has reconstructed the event as it actually took place or constructed de nouveau an entirely different affair” (p. 548).
Whatever the reality of the case may be with regard to “The Philosophy of Composition,” it is fun to apply Poe’s claims about how he wrote “The Raven” to the poem itself – as it is always a pleasure to return to “The Raven” and savor the moment when the speaker opens his window shutter and “In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore” (p. 620). The Raven steps in, instantly making Poe a household name – and Poe’s life changes, and so does our whole world. What is the name of Baltimore’s professional football team again?
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe provides a fine introduction to the work of this singularly important American author. In its own time, The Portable Poe was no doubt read by U.S. military personnel serving in the European and Asian theatres of war. Many years later, as a college undergraduate in Tidewater Virginia, I found my own pocket-sized copy of The Portable Poe, and would turn to it with pleasure at my favorite reading spot along Duke of Gloucester Street in colonial Williamsburg. No doubt The Portable Poe will continue to introduce readers to the work of Edgar Allan Poe for many years to come.
It is not a coincidence that these early entries in the Viking Portable Library series have World War II-era publication dates. The historical context out of which the Viking Portable Library emerged was unmistakably a wartime context; the Portable Library got its start in a 1943 series titled As You Were. The military-style title, referring as it does to the command by which soldiers standing at attention are told by an officer that they can resume a more relaxed posture, speaks to the intended audience and purpose of these books as A Portable Library of American Prose and Poetry Assembled for Members of the Armed Forces and Merchant Marine.
It is heartening to think that, in the midst of a hideous and all-consuming war, both civilian publishers and high-ranking military officers felt that it was worthwhile to encourage the reading of American literature by members of the American armed forces. That literature is, after all, an outgrowth of a democratic culture and a democratic society, and it is good that it was being made available to the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who were then being asked to fight for democracy.
In the case of The Portable Poe, the person who was asked to choose from among Poe’s works, and to frame them with commentary that would help an audience of both soldiers and civilians, was Philip Van Doren Stern. Today, Stern is best known for two things: his Civil War histories, which one still sees in reprint editions at Barnes & Noble or Books-a-Million; and his 1944 Christmas story “The Greatest Gift,” adapted by director Frank Capra into the film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).
Yet Stern was also a gifted editor with a thoroughgoing knowledge of American literary history, and he brought those gifts to bear in putting together The Portable Edgar Allan Poe. He begins The Portable Poe by publishing 25 of Poe’s letters; the letters cover the period from 1827 to 1849 (or, from just after Poe’s 18th birthday through his mysterious death at age 40), and convey the often tragic and difficult trajectory of Poe’s life.
Having thus dealt with biographical details, Stern goes on to consider Poe’s stories, grouping them around five themes that were important to Poe: “Fantasy,” “Terror,” “Death,” “Revenge and Murder,” and “Mystery and Ratiocination.” In each case, Stern’s framing introduction does much to help the reader perceive thematic threads that bind together Poe’s often challenging (and, sometimes, seemingly self-contradictory) work.
Stern’s perspectives regarding Poe’s work help the reader to see familiar stories in new and unfamiliar ways. For instance, Stern introduces the “On Terror” section by suggesting that “Any man who writes of terror must be peculiarly susceptible to fear. Poe was a frightened creature, afraid of a hostile world, but most of all, afraid of the dreadful images that lurked in his own mind. Out of his own fears and his own nightmares came the stuff from which he made his stories” (119).
These ideas seem applicable to easily-overlooked passages from well-known Poe stories; in “The Pit and the Pendulum,” for example, the narrator, a captive of the Spanish Inquisition, remarks at one point that “By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me” (161).
Similarly, Stern frames the section “On Death” with an assertion that death “was Poe’s favorite subject, the idea he was most obsessed with, so that nearly all his work consists of variations on this single theme. No American writer has dwelt so consistently on the subject, delved into it so deeply, and made death’s doings his own to the extent that Poe did” (p. 191). The relevance of Stern’s words is clear in a tale like “Ligeia” – the story that Poe declared to be his favorite from among all his tales.
The title character of "Ligeia," the beautiful and brilliant wife of the story’s first-person narrator, responds to the knowledge of her imminent and premature demise by looking to conquering Death and asking, “[S]hall this Conqueror be not once conquered?...Who – who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly,, save only through the weakness of his feeble will” (p. 234; emphasis in original). What follows is what may be the most definitive of Poe’s “revenant” tales, exploring the question of whether Ligeia’s strength of will can overcome death itself.
There were times when I disagreed with Stern’s claims regarding Poe. He introduces the section of stories “Of Revenge and Murder” by claiming that “There was a sadistic streak in [Poe]…a malicious and wanton desire to hurt others for the perverse satisfaction it gave him” (p. 288). This way of thinking, to my mind, sounds all too much like editor Rufus Griswold’s post-mortem attacks on Poe’s reputation. From the fact that Poe wrote about revenge and murder, it does not follow that Poe was disposed toward revenge and murder. Indeed, the historical record indicates that those who best knew Poe were most appreciative of his courtly and kind personality, and admired his dedication to the craft of writing.
And Poe stories like “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” work as moral tales, showing how acts of murder and revenge destroy their perpetrators. Even “The Cask of Amontillado” – ostensibly the story of a man who gets away with a cruel revenge – shows that the revenger, Montresor, is haunted by what he did to the unlucky Fortunato; a close reading of the story shows that Montresor is confessing to a priest – “You, who so well know the nature of my soul” (p. 309). Fifty years after committing “the perfect crime,” Montresor is still trying to tell himself that he felt no remorse at walling up Fortunato in an underground catacomb: “My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs that made it so” (p. 317). No, Montresor, it wasn’t the dampness of the catacombs: it’s your conscience letting you know that when you walled up your enemy, you committed a live burial of your own heart. You will never escape what you did.
Stern is on firmer ground when he talks about Poe’s stories “Of Mystery and Ratiocination,” suggesting that “When [Poe] created the character of his detective, C. Auguste Dupin, he projected an idealization of himself as he would like to have been – a cool, infallible thinking machine that brought the power of reason to bear on all of life’s problems and triumphantly solved them” (p. 330). That quality of Dupin as a wish-fulfillment projection of Poe’s fantasy life comes forth in a story like “The Purloined Letter,” in which Dupin points out the errors in the thinking of the Prefect of the Parisian Police – “[H]e perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand” (p. 450) – but then uses his own ratiocinative skills to help the Prefect by foiling a blackmailer’s plot against the French royal family.
Stern also include examples of Poe’s articles, criticism, poems, and opinions. With regard to “The Philosophy of Composition,” the essay in which Poe famously claimed to set forth the exact process by which he wrote “The Raven” – “It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition – that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem” (pp. 551-52) – Stern writes that the essay “is fascinating – if the reader does not take it too seriously”, and wonders aloud “whether [Poe] has reconstructed the event as it actually took place or constructed de nouveau an entirely different affair” (p. 548).
Whatever the reality of the case may be with regard to “The Philosophy of Composition,” it is fun to apply Poe’s claims about how he wrote “The Raven” to the poem itself – as it is always a pleasure to return to “The Raven” and savor the moment when the speaker opens his window shutter and “In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore” (p. 620). The Raven steps in, instantly making Poe a household name – and Poe’s life changes, and so does our whole world. What is the name of Baltimore’s professional football team again?
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe provides a fine introduction to the work of this singularly important American author. In its own time, The Portable Poe was no doubt read by U.S. military personnel serving in the European and Asian theatres of war. Many years later, as a college undergraduate in Tidewater Virginia, I found my own pocket-sized copy of The Portable Poe, and would turn to it with pleasure at my favorite reading spot along Duke of Gloucester Street in colonial Williamsburg. No doubt The Portable Poe will continue to introduce readers to the work of Edgar Allan Poe for many years to come.
May 29, 2023
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream"
~~4⭐~~
Edgar Allen Poe is my new obsession now. Sorry not sorry for making him my brand new personality:)))
October 20, 2025
It's always dangerous to publish the selected works of an author because everyone has some favorite works that never made it into the book. In the case of Edgar Allan Poe's The Portable Edgar Allan Poe, it would have been nice to include Poe's sole novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and the tale "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," but to make up for it, there were some delightful surprises, especially the letters.
I had never really read a scholarly edition of Poe before, complete with footnotes. (These help because Poe loved tossing off quotes in Latin, Greek, French, and German.) As a result, I would recommend this edition to any of the cheapie paperback editions of which there are legion.
I had never really read a scholarly edition of Poe before, complete with footnotes. (These help because Poe loved tossing off quotes in Latin, Greek, French, and German.) As a result, I would recommend this edition to any of the cheapie paperback editions of which there are legion.
March 3, 2015
Edgar Allan Poe was a depressive indolent drunk failure who married his 13-year-old cousin and spent his life composing purposefully obnoxious, repellant stories because "To be appreciated, you must be read," and he felt that the controversy would get him read. Which was astute of him.
His Dupin stories are interesting if you're a Holmes fan, since Conan Doyle's debt to them is obvious, but they're nowhere near as good as the Holmes stories. Fucking orangutans, man. His horror is hit or miss. Pit and the Pendulum is truly disturbing; Fall of the House of Usher is a little boring.
And he was just obsessed with being buried alive. Man, like all his stories are about that. Loss of Breath is my favorite, I think.
His Dupin stories are interesting if you're a Holmes fan, since Conan Doyle's debt to them is obvious, but they're nowhere near as good as the Holmes stories. Fucking orangutans, man. His horror is hit or miss. Pit and the Pendulum is truly disturbing; Fall of the House of Usher is a little boring.
And he was just obsessed with being buried alive. Man, like all his stories are about that. Loss of Breath is my favorite, I think.
November 11, 2013
Read selections from this for my coursera SF/F class. And... it's made me like Poe even less, somehow. I just found his prose completely stultifying -- possibly partly because I've read most of these stories before (if not all), partly because of the period it was written, and part of it must be something to do with Poe's style specifically, because I don't find all work of that era equally boring.
Whatever, I'm glad to have read Poe so I have that background knowledge, but emphasis on have read, past tense. I can't see myself voluntarily reading more of his work.
Whatever, I'm glad to have read Poe so I have that background knowledge, but emphasis on have read, past tense. I can't see myself voluntarily reading more of his work.
August 20, 2018
I'll admit, I skimmed over some of the essays and opinions. Also skipped a letter where he was obviously trying to get money out of a woman, lol. I listened to some of the stories on audio and I recommend these readers: Vincent Price (of course), Kerry Shale (for the Dupin stories) and the Public Domain Theater podcast (they have two of his stories so far).
October 1, 2025
"It was well said of a certain German book that “es lässt sich nicht lesen”—it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burthen so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged."
October 27, 2023
I have been wanting to read Poe for YEARS, and I finally did! It was so worth it. Incredibly creepy, often disturbed, but simply excellent.
November 20, 2021
try not to read in the voice of vincent price challenge
November 20, 2016
The idea of this book is almost as brilliant as the author himself. The Portable edition of Poe has selected items of his: short stories, poems, letters, critical principles and observations. Hear hear! I suggest that all masterful writers' works should be gathered within the same covers in the same fashion.
Why I initially chose this book was exactly that. I get to have a look of all different aspects of his works easily. Especially getting into some of the great minds and/or writers of the world can sometimes be overwhelming: They either have a vast amount of books published and/or pieces of works in different form (different kinds of publications published here or there on matters spanning across the spectrum). This way you get a good look into each form and at the same time you get a good general idea of the person's work/thoughts/character.
I've already read all Poe's short stories, some of them several times, since I own a collection of them all. Therefore I only read The Tell-Tale Heart this time. And even that only because it's so short. My all-time favourite is The Murders in the Rue Morgue but I got this edition for Raven, since I had previously read none of Poe's poems. I know, an attrocity I will make up for durings the years ahead of me as I plan to devour them all. The Portable held only a selected few, of which my favourites were:
Fairy-Land, Introduction, The Raven, Ulalume - A Ballad, A Dream Within a Dream. These were the ones that captivated me the most. Some of these even made me point and go "That's me!"
I read some of the letters but I've read many of these before as well, having read alot about Poe's life and the letters inevitably come up. He was a very troubled man and not only his life, but the society back then, evolved pretty much around letter writing. I have to note that Poe's letters are a must for anyone wanting to learn about the man himself. That's where you get to read about him from his own words.
Now, the Critical Principles were all together a different story. I can honestly say I'm one of these people who finds it hard to follow certain principles when it comes to things like writing. His views reflect his person though. He seems to have certain views that he is adamant on and will not budge. He writes his principles like he's carving them in stone and I wouldn't have expected anything less of him.
Observations were far more interesting than the Critical Principles. It seems like he has gone through those experiences himself and is writing his observations as a kind of a reply to someone in particular. As if he has had a conversation and we only get to see his side.
Imagination and Insight, Works of Genius, Language and Thought, The Unwritable Book, Imagination, Art and the Soul are pieces that touched me personally the most.
Why I initially chose this book was exactly that. I get to have a look of all different aspects of his works easily. Especially getting into some of the great minds and/or writers of the world can sometimes be overwhelming: They either have a vast amount of books published and/or pieces of works in different form (different kinds of publications published here or there on matters spanning across the spectrum). This way you get a good look into each form and at the same time you get a good general idea of the person's work/thoughts/character.
I've already read all Poe's short stories, some of them several times, since I own a collection of them all. Therefore I only read The Tell-Tale Heart this time. And even that only because it's so short. My all-time favourite is The Murders in the Rue Morgue but I got this edition for Raven, since I had previously read none of Poe's poems. I know, an attrocity I will make up for durings the years ahead of me as I plan to devour them all. The Portable held only a selected few, of which my favourites were:
Fairy-Land, Introduction, The Raven, Ulalume - A Ballad, A Dream Within a Dream. These were the ones that captivated me the most. Some of these even made me point and go "That's me!"
I read some of the letters but I've read many of these before as well, having read alot about Poe's life and the letters inevitably come up. He was a very troubled man and not only his life, but the society back then, evolved pretty much around letter writing. I have to note that Poe's letters are a must for anyone wanting to learn about the man himself. That's where you get to read about him from his own words.
Now, the Critical Principles were all together a different story. I can honestly say I'm one of these people who finds it hard to follow certain principles when it comes to things like writing. His views reflect his person though. He seems to have certain views that he is adamant on and will not budge. He writes his principles like he's carving them in stone and I wouldn't have expected anything less of him.
Observations were far more interesting than the Critical Principles. It seems like he has gone through those experiences himself and is writing his observations as a kind of a reply to someone in particular. As if he has had a conversation and we only get to see his side.
Imagination and Insight, Works of Genius, Language and Thought, The Unwritable Book, Imagination, Art and the Soul are pieces that touched me personally the most.
March 20, 2017
*Just as a disclaimer, I read this for school, so I only read about a quarter of the book.*
Pretty much whenever I liked I story in here, I loved it. But when I didn't like one, I was constantly blinking tears out of my eyes because of constant yawning.
If you are interested in Poe's writings even a little bit, pick this up. It's packed to the brim with his stuff from all different kinds of genres: poetry, short stories, letters, etc. But even if you've never read Poe or aren't very interested... well, you're missing out!
Pretty much whenever I liked I story in here, I loved it. But when I didn't like one, I was constantly blinking tears out of my eyes because of constant yawning.
If you are interested in Poe's writings even a little bit, pick this up. It's packed to the brim with his stuff from all different kinds of genres: poetry, short stories, letters, etc. But even if you've never read Poe or aren't very interested... well, you're missing out!
February 20, 2019
Finished: 20.02.2019
Genre: short stories (classic)
Rating: C
#CCBookReviews
Conclusion:
Some good stories...
some very overrated!
My Thoughts
Genre: short stories (classic)
Rating: C
#CCBookReviews
Conclusion:
Some good stories...
some very overrated!
My Thoughts
July 28, 2024
Poe, for me, might be a three, but the simple fact this his work has endured and is still valued and treasured and read and studied…well, I have to give this collection at least a 4.
Poe experienced his own struggles, as we all have, do, and will, but his estrangement with his adopted father, John Allan, is especially sad. In 1827, Poe wrote to John Allan saying he had not “tasted food since yesterday morning. I have no where to sleep at night, but roam about the streets. I am nearly exhausted” (3). He ends the letter with “I have not one cent in the world to provide any food” (4). His letter, as well as other letters, went completely unanswered. As a parent, I cannot imagine ignoring my children’s cries for help. I think Poe’s many trials only served to enhance his writings which were often morbid and melancholy, but what a price to pay to leave such a legacy.
This collection includes letters which were incredibly interesting. Most are letters written to others by Poe, but a few are letters he received. There are many tales including tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge and murder, and mystery and ratiocination. My four favorite tales (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “Hop-Frog”) are all included in the “OF REVENGE AND MURDER” section. Gee! I wonder what that says about me? 😵💫 I very much enjoyed Poe’s Sherlock Holmes-type character before there even was a Sherlock Holmes: detective C. Auguste Dupin. Did you know Poe invented the detective story?! Also included in this collection are articles, criticism (B-O-R-I-N-G), poems (both prose and verse), and opinions (sheer TORTURE to get through). Most of his poems simply are not to my liking. That is not to say anything against Poe’s writing, simply that we all have differing tastes. However, I very much enjoyed “The Raven,” “A Valentine,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Bells.”
This book took me almost 2 months to complete. After reading each story, I searched videos on YouTube to compliment and enhance my reading. Please do not think videos replace reading because there were almost always more differences than similarities, but I had such fun with this! I watched many, many videos from short little 2 minutes animations to full length films. In fact, I created a playlist on YouTube which can be found here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg...
This playlist includes my favorite findings including a claymation, student/amateur productions, and full length films. 🎥 Not included: The Masque of the Red Death staring Vincent Price (too satanic) and The Fall of the House of Usher which I couldn’t find on YouTube and watched on Prime.
“There were two Poes. One was the hardworking editor, the intellectual critic, the respectable citizen who was interested in art and letters; the other was a disreputable fellow, who frequented low dives and who often wound up literally in the gutter” (55).
I think my favorite Poe short story is “The Black Cat.” Of course, favorites are always subject to change! 🤪 🐈⬛
I discovered “Hop-Frog” is included in the Vincent Price film “The Masquerade of the Red Death.” 💀
Poe experienced his own struggles, as we all have, do, and will, but his estrangement with his adopted father, John Allan, is especially sad. In 1827, Poe wrote to John Allan saying he had not “tasted food since yesterday morning. I have no where to sleep at night, but roam about the streets. I am nearly exhausted” (3). He ends the letter with “I have not one cent in the world to provide any food” (4). His letter, as well as other letters, went completely unanswered. As a parent, I cannot imagine ignoring my children’s cries for help. I think Poe’s many trials only served to enhance his writings which were often morbid and melancholy, but what a price to pay to leave such a legacy.
This collection includes letters which were incredibly interesting. Most are letters written to others by Poe, but a few are letters he received. There are many tales including tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge and murder, and mystery and ratiocination. My four favorite tales (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “Hop-Frog”) are all included in the “OF REVENGE AND MURDER” section. Gee! I wonder what that says about me? 😵💫 I very much enjoyed Poe’s Sherlock Holmes-type character before there even was a Sherlock Holmes: detective C. Auguste Dupin. Did you know Poe invented the detective story?! Also included in this collection are articles, criticism (B-O-R-I-N-G), poems (both prose and verse), and opinions (sheer TORTURE to get through). Most of his poems simply are not to my liking. That is not to say anything against Poe’s writing, simply that we all have differing tastes. However, I very much enjoyed “The Raven,” “A Valentine,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Bells.”
This book took me almost 2 months to complete. After reading each story, I searched videos on YouTube to compliment and enhance my reading. Please do not think videos replace reading because there were almost always more differences than similarities, but I had such fun with this! I watched many, many videos from short little 2 minutes animations to full length films. In fact, I created a playlist on YouTube which can be found here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg...
This playlist includes my favorite findings including a claymation, student/amateur productions, and full length films. 🎥 Not included: The Masque of the Red Death staring Vincent Price (too satanic) and The Fall of the House of Usher which I couldn’t find on YouTube and watched on Prime.
“There were two Poes. One was the hardworking editor, the intellectual critic, the respectable citizen who was interested in art and letters; the other was a disreputable fellow, who frequented low dives and who often wound up literally in the gutter” (55).
I think my favorite Poe short story is “The Black Cat.” Of course, favorites are always subject to change! 🤪 🐈⬛
I discovered “Hop-Frog” is included in the Vincent Price film “The Masquerade of the Red Death.” 💀
September 18, 2023
“I was never really insane except on occasions my heart was touched.”
Poe’s collection of short stories, poems, and letters was one that I had wanted to read for quite some time. I’ve read a story or poem from him on occasion for literature classes over the years but I had never gotten the opportunity to sit down and dive into a much deeper collection of his works. Initially I thought his stories would be the most intriguing to me, but after finishing the collection I would argue his letters and poetry had a much deeper impact on my overall experience. Reading his letters chronologically and seeing him slowly descend into a further state of delirium and despair gave a lot of insight into some of his later literary works. You realize how he connects his bleak personal life to his stories and poems, and how with each stroke of a pen a piece of him is left on that page. The quote I chose was from a letter he penned to his mother-in-law (aunt) that detailed his crippling battle with alcoholism in response to the death of his wife. There’s a lot of things I like about Poe’s writing but nothing sticks out as much as his ability to convey his emotions, especially bad ones. You realize how conflicted he was as a man, and how he used his writing as a mechanism to try and relieve some of that pain. Ultimately this was a battle he would lose, but I find it admirable that he was able to convey his emotions with such effect. I really enjoyed reading the collection as a whole but some of the stories were a bit harder to get into than others. There’s a lot to gather from the writings of Poe and I have no doubts I will read many of these works again in the future.
Poe’s collection of short stories, poems, and letters was one that I had wanted to read for quite some time. I’ve read a story or poem from him on occasion for literature classes over the years but I had never gotten the opportunity to sit down and dive into a much deeper collection of his works. Initially I thought his stories would be the most intriguing to me, but after finishing the collection I would argue his letters and poetry had a much deeper impact on my overall experience. Reading his letters chronologically and seeing him slowly descend into a further state of delirium and despair gave a lot of insight into some of his later literary works. You realize how he connects his bleak personal life to his stories and poems, and how with each stroke of a pen a piece of him is left on that page. The quote I chose was from a letter he penned to his mother-in-law (aunt) that detailed his crippling battle with alcoholism in response to the death of his wife. There’s a lot of things I like about Poe’s writing but nothing sticks out as much as his ability to convey his emotions, especially bad ones. You realize how conflicted he was as a man, and how he used his writing as a mechanism to try and relieve some of that pain. Ultimately this was a battle he would lose, but I find it admirable that he was able to convey his emotions with such effect. I really enjoyed reading the collection as a whole but some of the stories were a bit harder to get into than others. There’s a lot to gather from the writings of Poe and I have no doubts I will read many of these works again in the future.
April 27, 2022
There is no denying that Poe was brilliant. I found myself having to pull out my dictionary on many occasions. However, I only liked a few things he wrote. Of course, I like The Raven, The Bells and Annabel Lee. I had never heard of The Gold-Bug and found it an interesting read along with The Tell-Tale Heart (which reminded me a bit of Crime and Punishment), The Black Cat and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. I saw The Fall of the House of Usher with Vincent Price as a little girl and loved it. Sadly, I didn’t love the story as much as the movie. Poe is a little macabre and morose for me, but he was quite obviously very intelligent and well-versed.
November 1, 2022
This year’s Halloween read. Poe was obviously a literary genius. Highlights include his tales (SO MUCH cousin marrying and premature burying) and the Raven. His other poetry is a little bland and doesn’t exhibit the rhythmic and phonetic tightness that makes the Raven great. The letters, articles, biographical material were good for understanding the man but also made his work feel less genius because I knew that he was kind of a weepy asshole. At his best, felt like Junji Ito or Kafka - terrifying because his subject is the bizarre and inexplicable.
February 3, 2021
This is an interesting compilation of fascinating facts, letters, articles, poems, and short stories written about and by Poe. I had forgotten some aspects of the stories I had read decades ago. I was pleased to find that I enjoyed them a little more the second time around after reading comments and facts about his life, and how it influenced his writing.
April 5, 2025
DNF, good stories - I'm just not meant to read old English
August 25, 2023
Difficult, challenging, creepy, confounding, humorous, miserable, haunting, impossible, incomprehensible and brilliant, the work of Edgar Allan Poe (at least what's presented in this compendium) is all those things. In short, "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe" is indeed essential reading for those of us ignorant of Poe's short stories, poems, letters, essays and all. In long, woe to the reader who dares to suffer through Edgar Allan Poe's dark, gloomy, hopeless, impossible, dense and disturbing prose, which functions like a distasteful medicine that one dreads tasting, yet once digested it provides for a myriad of benefits.
Edited, compiled and presented (to a fault) by Gerald Kennedy, who goes too far when introducing chapters and sections by SPOILING some of Poe's surprise endings before the reader gets a chance to read them! Very poor judgement, Mr. Kennedy. Couldn't you wait until AFTER the reader read through the stories themselves?? Anyway...
Upon going through "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe," one does get a great sense as to who Edgar Allan Poe might have been, and a healthy enough portion of his writing for one to gather a sense of Poe's artistic style. Perhaps like Poe himself, some of his writing is too esoteric, too intellectual, too dense, too filled with complex verbiage, names, adjectives and references that only scholars would understand...plus Poe has a weakness for dropping in words and sentences in French, Latin and Greek, then returning back to English. For those not versed in four languages, we're left in the cold. Sure, one CAN look up the French, Latin, Greek translations...yet...where's the fun in that?
Worse, Edgar Allan Poe, has a tendency to write, in turn, sentences of extreme length, with so many asides and distractions, with a 1001 commas, to make, a point, and also, in turn, make his sentences and ideas so long, and never-ending, just like this very one that I am now, at present, writing this very moment, that, by the time one get to, at last, the ending of a particular sentence, one has forgotten what the original point of the sentence was in the first place! Ugh!
Some of Edgar Allan Poe's stories are simple, thick, and not particularly enjoyable mood pieces, such as "A Descent Into The Maelstrom." Others, like "The Masque of the Red Death" at least paint a vivid enough picture of horror that the reader gets something out of it. "The Pit and The Pendulum" being the best of Poe's mood pieces in its black hopelessness, suspense and utter terror. Poe used the word "terror" a lot in his stories, possibly as a device to point the reader in the right direction.
Poe appeared to have a concern or interest in death, and the dreadful, unfortunate circumstance of being buried alive. "The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar" is a unnerving look at the death process, while "The Fall of the House of Usher" takes the "buried alive" motif to the next level as a mood piece that is filled with depth and history and fantastical elements of poetry and poetic justice.
If "brevity is the soul of wit," than Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" wins the game as one of the writer's shorter short stories that packs a lot into its brief tale of madness, murder and unconscious guilt manifesting itself with a creeping, beating, heart. Despite the exemplary imagery, was not too fond of the mood piece "The Cask of the Amontillado." However "The Black Cat" is strong story, working like a longer version of "The Tell-Tale Heart," albeit with a cat instead of the beating heart taking on the role of unconscious guilt, and an alarming call to justice.
Just when you think you know and can predict Edgar Allan Poe's style, the writer switches it up. Though intellectually and artistically talented enough to paint complex pictures with his prose, Poe delivered a straight forward revenge tale called "Hop-Frog," written during his final year on earth. After enduring pages of challenging material, it was nice to just simple ENJOY one of Poe's short stories without taxing my intellect...and sanity.
Although it is true that Edgar Allan Poe DID invent the detective story with his C. Auguste Dupin tales. Getting through "The Murders In The Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" was a challenging chore that made it near-impossible to truly enjoy. What is fascinating, however, is that Dupin's deductive genius is so utterly casual that he is able to observe and deduce most of his findings while just sitting in his Paris apartment. In "The Murders In The Rue Morgue," Dupin makes ALL of his deductions just from hearing a newspaper article read to him. In "The Purloined Letter," Dupin makes at least one, brief outing in order to solve the case.
"The Gold Bug" also lies under the umbrella of mystery, what with its unhealthy yet determined lead character unlocking an impossible cipher (which seems impossible when given full explanation) in order to find the location of a buried treasure. It's a rare tale of procuring a buried treasure where the hero comes out ahead with a most happy ending.
Under the banner "Grotesqueries," "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe" showcases the rare use of humor in the writer's prose...and it's terrific! Though arguably an annoying read at first, "Poe's "The Man That Was Used Up" comes to a shocking, silly and satisfying resolve that makes the whole piece worth it. The humor found in "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether is deliciously fun, and makes one wonder why Poe did not take more advantage of his way with humor. "Some Words With A Mummy" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's most enjoyable, quirky and satisfying works of literature.
Of the Edgar Allan Poe poems found in this collection, I was a big fan of "El Dorado" for its effervescent beauty, and loved "The Raven" with its rhythms and its "Never More"s. Poe was someone who appreciated music, and some of his best work, like "The Raven" give off the impression of verses and choruses of a song.
The remainder of "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe" contains revealing personal letters, showcasing Poe's passionate love for the women in his life, his humble and bold efforts to win support or finances, as well as his anger and righteous indignation at those whom he feels have wronged him, or have done some injustice to literature as a whole. The compendium also contains a healthy portion of Poe's critiques and essays on all manner of subjects, which range from compelling narratives to ponderous and pretentious proclamations that are just miserable to get through...let alone understand.
Of most interest (to this reader, at least), was Poe's assertion that poetry of a specific length, and the short story were the purest form of literature. Poe felt that any literary work that could not be read in one sitting, is a work diluted by all forms of distraction. The reason Poe choose to only write one novel, and instead spend the majority of his time writing short prose is because he felt that the best way to fully experience everything that an author intends to convey, is to experience the literary work in full...without any external anything separating the writer's prose from the reader reading and experiencing it. It's a beautiful thing, and also a shame that Poe could not see the benefit of the protracted reading of short and epic-length novels.
Again, NOT an easy read, but a rich and valuable one. Despite his oversharing ways, kudos to Gerald Kennedy for compiling Poe's work into this edition of "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe." I appreciated learning about Poe's life through Kennedy's research, and recognize the vast value of the sometimes bitter, sometimes miserable, sometimes beautiful and beneficial medicine that is the literary work of Edgar Allan Poe.
Edited, compiled and presented (to a fault) by Gerald Kennedy, who goes too far when introducing chapters and sections by SPOILING some of Poe's surprise endings before the reader gets a chance to read them! Very poor judgement, Mr. Kennedy. Couldn't you wait until AFTER the reader read through the stories themselves?? Anyway...
Upon going through "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe," one does get a great sense as to who Edgar Allan Poe might have been, and a healthy enough portion of his writing for one to gather a sense of Poe's artistic style. Perhaps like Poe himself, some of his writing is too esoteric, too intellectual, too dense, too filled with complex verbiage, names, adjectives and references that only scholars would understand...plus Poe has a weakness for dropping in words and sentences in French, Latin and Greek, then returning back to English. For those not versed in four languages, we're left in the cold. Sure, one CAN look up the French, Latin, Greek translations...yet...where's the fun in that?
Worse, Edgar Allan Poe, has a tendency to write, in turn, sentences of extreme length, with so many asides and distractions, with a 1001 commas, to make, a point, and also, in turn, make his sentences and ideas so long, and never-ending, just like this very one that I am now, at present, writing this very moment, that, by the time one get to, at last, the ending of a particular sentence, one has forgotten what the original point of the sentence was in the first place! Ugh!
Some of Edgar Allan Poe's stories are simple, thick, and not particularly enjoyable mood pieces, such as "A Descent Into The Maelstrom." Others, like "The Masque of the Red Death" at least paint a vivid enough picture of horror that the reader gets something out of it. "The Pit and The Pendulum" being the best of Poe's mood pieces in its black hopelessness, suspense and utter terror. Poe used the word "terror" a lot in his stories, possibly as a device to point the reader in the right direction.
Poe appeared to have a concern or interest in death, and the dreadful, unfortunate circumstance of being buried alive. "The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar" is a unnerving look at the death process, while "The Fall of the House of Usher" takes the "buried alive" motif to the next level as a mood piece that is filled with depth and history and fantastical elements of poetry and poetic justice.
If "brevity is the soul of wit," than Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" wins the game as one of the writer's shorter short stories that packs a lot into its brief tale of madness, murder and unconscious guilt manifesting itself with a creeping, beating, heart. Despite the exemplary imagery, was not too fond of the mood piece "The Cask of the Amontillado." However "The Black Cat" is strong story, working like a longer version of "The Tell-Tale Heart," albeit with a cat instead of the beating heart taking on the role of unconscious guilt, and an alarming call to justice.
Just when you think you know and can predict Edgar Allan Poe's style, the writer switches it up. Though intellectually and artistically talented enough to paint complex pictures with his prose, Poe delivered a straight forward revenge tale called "Hop-Frog," written during his final year on earth. After enduring pages of challenging material, it was nice to just simple ENJOY one of Poe's short stories without taxing my intellect...and sanity.
Although it is true that Edgar Allan Poe DID invent the detective story with his C. Auguste Dupin tales. Getting through "The Murders In The Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" was a challenging chore that made it near-impossible to truly enjoy. What is fascinating, however, is that Dupin's deductive genius is so utterly casual that he is able to observe and deduce most of his findings while just sitting in his Paris apartment. In "The Murders In The Rue Morgue," Dupin makes ALL of his deductions just from hearing a newspaper article read to him. In "The Purloined Letter," Dupin makes at least one, brief outing in order to solve the case.
"The Gold Bug" also lies under the umbrella of mystery, what with its unhealthy yet determined lead character unlocking an impossible cipher (which seems impossible when given full explanation) in order to find the location of a buried treasure. It's a rare tale of procuring a buried treasure where the hero comes out ahead with a most happy ending.
Under the banner "Grotesqueries," "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe" showcases the rare use of humor in the writer's prose...and it's terrific! Though arguably an annoying read at first, "Poe's "The Man That Was Used Up" comes to a shocking, silly and satisfying resolve that makes the whole piece worth it. The humor found in "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether is deliciously fun, and makes one wonder why Poe did not take more advantage of his way with humor. "Some Words With A Mummy" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's most enjoyable, quirky and satisfying works of literature.
Of the Edgar Allan Poe poems found in this collection, I was a big fan of "El Dorado" for its effervescent beauty, and loved "The Raven" with its rhythms and its "Never More"s. Poe was someone who appreciated music, and some of his best work, like "The Raven" give off the impression of verses and choruses of a song.
The remainder of "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe" contains revealing personal letters, showcasing Poe's passionate love for the women in his life, his humble and bold efforts to win support or finances, as well as his anger and righteous indignation at those whom he feels have wronged him, or have done some injustice to literature as a whole. The compendium also contains a healthy portion of Poe's critiques and essays on all manner of subjects, which range from compelling narratives to ponderous and pretentious proclamations that are just miserable to get through...let alone understand.
Of most interest (to this reader, at least), was Poe's assertion that poetry of a specific length, and the short story were the purest form of literature. Poe felt that any literary work that could not be read in one sitting, is a work diluted by all forms of distraction. The reason Poe choose to only write one novel, and instead spend the majority of his time writing short prose is because he felt that the best way to fully experience everything that an author intends to convey, is to experience the literary work in full...without any external anything separating the writer's prose from the reader reading and experiencing it. It's a beautiful thing, and also a shame that Poe could not see the benefit of the protracted reading of short and epic-length novels.
Again, NOT an easy read, but a rich and valuable one. Despite his oversharing ways, kudos to Gerald Kennedy for compiling Poe's work into this edition of "The Portable Edgar Allan Poe." I appreciated learning about Poe's life through Kennedy's research, and recognize the vast value of the sometimes bitter, sometimes miserable, sometimes beautiful and beneficial medicine that is the literary work of Edgar Allan Poe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 6, 2012
Don’t Believe Everything You Are Told
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart are both told from the point of view of narrators who are, because of their insanity, unreliable . Poe uses this literary device to both increase our horror of the murders committed but also make us doubt the reality of the stories.
The really sinister thing about using madmen to relate a story is that both of them fail to realize the truth about themselves. They claim from the beginning not to be crazy “but why will you say that I am mad?” and “Yet, mad am I not.” and always relate their own actions with a favorable slant.
While all narrators are somewhat untrustworthy, a significant component of these particular storyteller’s unreliability is that they are not at all objective and are continually deceiving themselves. Their narratives are both a confession and a justification for their vile conduct. They feel no remorse whatsoever for what they have done. Again this dreadful lack of conscience increases both our terror and lack of confidence in the reciters of these terrible stories.
They both give self-serving accounts of the murders they commit as if it were the most logical and rational thing in the world to do. We the readers perceive this as one more sign of their insanity and unreliability. The almost dream-like way in which the story-tellers tell their tale puts a certain distance between them and their actions and show their complete lack of responsibility for their ghastly deeds. The irony is that both narrators are ultimately not even true to themselves but by their arrogant self-deception reveal their crimes to the authorities.
At the end we are left with not only the horror of these tales resonating in our heads but also speculating if they can have possibly happened as we have been told by the unreliable narrators.
The above essay was written for the Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World course from Coursera.
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart are both told from the point of view of narrators who are, because of their insanity, unreliable . Poe uses this literary device to both increase our horror of the murders committed but also make us doubt the reality of the stories.
The really sinister thing about using madmen to relate a story is that both of them fail to realize the truth about themselves. They claim from the beginning not to be crazy “but why will you say that I am mad?” and “Yet, mad am I not.” and always relate their own actions with a favorable slant.
While all narrators are somewhat untrustworthy, a significant component of these particular storyteller’s unreliability is that they are not at all objective and are continually deceiving themselves. Their narratives are both a confession and a justification for their vile conduct. They feel no remorse whatsoever for what they have done. Again this dreadful lack of conscience increases both our terror and lack of confidence in the reciters of these terrible stories.
They both give self-serving accounts of the murders they commit as if it were the most logical and rational thing in the world to do. We the readers perceive this as one more sign of their insanity and unreliability. The almost dream-like way in which the story-tellers tell their tale puts a certain distance between them and their actions and show their complete lack of responsibility for their ghastly deeds. The irony is that both narrators are ultimately not even true to themselves but by their arrogant self-deception reveal their crimes to the authorities.
At the end we are left with not only the horror of these tales resonating in our heads but also speculating if they can have possibly happened as we have been told by the unreliable narrators.
The above essay was written for the Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World course from Coursera.
March 7, 2010
This is a collection of work by Edgar Allan Poe, including letters, stories, poems, criticism and opinions. I must confess that I found it hard going. Poe isn't an easy writer to read. Some of his poems are pretty difficult, and even some of his prose fiction was a slog, without even the denseness of poetry that I find personally difficult. There is a recurring theme of death and loss which grows wearing after a while and when you do encounter something with no mention of it, it's a breath of fresh air.
Poe was possibly the first writer to write a detective story, with his creation C. Auguste Dupin, all three of whose stories are here, and from whom the descent to Holmes and beyond is clear. In saying that, the Dupin stories themselves aren't hugely gripping and are more interesting to see the form of the detective story developing than anything else.
I'd never read any Poe before so this was a good selection of his work, but I don't think I'll particularly be looking out for any more, to be honest.
Poe was possibly the first writer to write a detective story, with his creation C. Auguste Dupin, all three of whose stories are here, and from whom the descent to Holmes and beyond is clear. In saying that, the Dupin stories themselves aren't hugely gripping and are more interesting to see the form of the detective story developing than anything else.
I'd never read any Poe before so this was a good selection of his work, but I don't think I'll particularly be looking out for any more, to be honest.
January 15, 2011
When you meet somebody for the first time and spend a while getting to know them, the first words don't often encompass a comprehensive personal history followed promptly with an intrusive background check (well, not for me anyway). I wish I had read this book back to front, starting with the man's opinions and poetry, his tales of mystery, murder and death, and leaving the invasion of his personal world of fantasy for the end. The letters could have been left out entirely, but if you must read them, save them for last, otherwise you will see the man they depict in everything which follows, and only that man. There is more to Poe than the events of his personal life, and I had to battle with the imprints left on me in the beginning in order to see that. From the obsessive, vengeful madness, to the simple beauty of his language, all gives way to a deep, dark hollow, resounding throughout, but if you step lightly, refusing to sink to that level, you might never even know it's there.
April 5, 2013
“The Raven” is the first poem I fell in love with in English (I'm not a native speaker). I was the right age, a brooding teenager, when I found a volume of poems for some long-forgotten class on the early 20th century. The old textbook had a faded dark blue cloth cover and was tucked with other books in a box found by my uncle in an old house he had bought. He was going to throw the books away, but I thumbed through a few and decided to salvage them.
I remember standing there in front of his garage, reading “The Raven” and feeling my brooding teenager soul, lately fed on J.R.R. Tolkien, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens, gasp with delight. The gloom! The pathos! The supernatural! If we’d had Romantic Goths back then, that would have been my tribe, at least that year. I didn’t like Hawthorne, I didn’t care to read his musings on sin.
Now I’m older and I find that while I still like Poe, I don’t love him as much as I used to.
I remember standing there in front of his garage, reading “The Raven” and feeling my brooding teenager soul, lately fed on J.R.R. Tolkien, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens, gasp with delight. The gloom! The pathos! The supernatural! If we’d had Romantic Goths back then, that would have been my tribe, at least that year. I didn’t like Hawthorne, I didn’t care to read his musings on sin.
Now I’m older and I find that while I still like Poe, I don’t love him as much as I used to.
May 20, 2020
Wow, there's some good stuff in here! I mean in addition to the extremely well-known works. Here are some general observations:
-Why don't we, as a society, talk about the story "Hop-Frog" more? It was actually probably the most horrifying?
-Apparently Poe wrote the first ever cyborg story (!), but also maybe he was extremely horny for the cyborg (?).
-The original version of The Purloined Letter is much worse than the Wishbone re-telling thereof.
-I really liked the collection of short "blurbs/marginalia" Poe wrote (apparently just little musings used to fill space in the magazines he worked for) at the end of this book.
-Speaking of which, Poe wanted the United States of America to be renamed "Appalachia" in part so that the USA wouldn't be taking a name that is already taken by two continents and I really wish the mid nineteenth century USA had taken him up on that suggestion.
-Why don't we, as a society, talk about the story "Hop-Frog" more? It was actually probably the most horrifying?
-Apparently Poe wrote the first ever cyborg story (!), but also maybe he was extremely horny for the cyborg (?).
-The original version of The Purloined Letter is much worse than the Wishbone re-telling thereof.
-I really liked the collection of short "blurbs/marginalia" Poe wrote (apparently just little musings used to fill space in the magazines he worked for) at the end of this book.
-Speaking of which, Poe wanted the United States of America to be renamed "Appalachia" in part so that the USA wouldn't be taking a name that is already taken by two continents and I really wish the mid nineteenth century USA had taken him up on that suggestion.
October 3, 2009
I read The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Purloined Letter for my book club. I also opted to read The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado and some of the poems I remembered from high school - The Raven, To Helen, Annabel Lee, and The Bells. I would give this 3 1/2 stars. The stories were good, although it took some getting used to the language. I enjoyed The Purloined Letter best - the others, while good, were pretty morbid. I actually enjoyed the poems better than the short stories - the rhyming and rhythm along with word choice were very carefully selected. Poe's works are something that Americans can be at least familiar with.
August 22, 2012
Una extraordinaria colección de gran parte de la obra de Poe, sus cuentos, historias cortas, poemas, dedicatorias y demás, una obra importante para la literatura romántica y gótica, muy recomendable en particular las historias The Facts in the case of M Valdemar, The Fall or the House of Usher, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Oval Portrait, The Raven, The Bell, Anabel Lee, Leonor among others.
March 5, 2013
This, again, is a reread for the Cousera Fantasy and Science Fiction MOOC.
I enjoyed this reading, even though somewhat rushed, a bit deeper than other times I read it, specially The Raven which I have not only read but listened and watched Vincent Price deliver.
Poe is a master of bringing settings to life with a few chosen words, specially horror and Gothic scenery which makes me wonder why I feel so connected to it.
I enjoyed this reading, even though somewhat rushed, a bit deeper than other times I read it, specially The Raven which I have not only read but listened and watched Vincent Price deliver.
Poe is a master of bringing settings to life with a few chosen words, specially horror and Gothic scenery which makes me wonder why I feel so connected to it.
December 8, 2008
great stuff - of course, the fiction overlapped with the "tales" i read earlier this year, but the letters, poems, criticism, etc., are all worth experiencing. you can't help but walk away from a volume like this marveling at poe's incredible imagination, and wondering at his incredible bad luck. and then worrying if those two things go hand in hand.
September 2, 2012
This was suggested reading for 'Fantasy and Science Fiction' course at Coursera.
Stories-
1) "The Fall of the House of Usher,"
2) "The Tell-Tale Heart,"
3) "The Black Cat,"
4) "The Oval Portrait,"
5) "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,"
Poems-
1) "The Bells,"
2) "The Raven,"
3) "Annabel Lee."
Stories-
1) "The Fall of the House of Usher,"
2) "The Tell-Tale Heart,"
3) "The Black Cat,"
4) "The Oval Portrait,"
5) "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,"
Poems-
1) "The Bells,"
2) "The Raven,"
3) "Annabel Lee."
March 4, 2013
I enjoyed some of the stories a lot more than others, but it's not difficult to appreciate the beauty in Poe's writing style. His use of language is clever and considered, and often brilliant. I was surprised that the gothic and morbid elements are quite so prominent throughout. 'The Tell-Tale Heart' is now firmly in my top ten favourite short stories.
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