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Major Tales and Poems
Edgar Allen Poe's Tales and Poems.
376 pages, Unknown Binding
30 people are currently reading
240 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,942 books28.9k 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 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 31, 2020
You would swear at times, reading these, that they were written by multiple people. He had so many writing styles!
I don't know whether he was "finding his voice" or experimenting or what but he seemed equally at home in a number of voices, characters, styles and genres.
He is primarily associated with horror and death but he wrote great detective fiction and actually had a dark sense of humor. I liked the atmosphere and imagery he brought to life in The Fall Of The House Of Usher. I don't think films have been able to really capture the essence of his stories... they are primarily interior (and in the case of The Pit And The Pendulum, can take place entirely in the dark!) and are meant to be read, dreamed, perhaps heard or thought about. Alone.
Dialogue and action are not what he is doing in many of these. I would like to see a decent film of The Masque Of The Red Death or The Hopfrog one of these days though.
Good quarantine reading. I read these over a period of about 2 months, slowly, to make them last.
I don't know whether he was "finding his voice" or experimenting or what but he seemed equally at home in a number of voices, characters, styles and genres.
He is primarily associated with horror and death but he wrote great detective fiction and actually had a dark sense of humor. I liked the atmosphere and imagery he brought to life in The Fall Of The House Of Usher. I don't think films have been able to really capture the essence of his stories... they are primarily interior (and in the case of The Pit And The Pendulum, can take place entirely in the dark!) and are meant to be read, dreamed, perhaps heard or thought about. Alone.
Dialogue and action are not what he is doing in many of these. I would like to see a decent film of The Masque Of The Red Death or The Hopfrog one of these days though.
Good quarantine reading. I read these over a period of about 2 months, slowly, to make them last.
December 10, 2023
Classic, beautifully atmospheric stories, but more interesting was the deep dive into what the world of literature was like and used for in the 1830s and '40s.
September 27, 2021
This Borders Classics collection is a beautiful edition that contains all of Poe's best work across various genres: horror, mystery, adventure, poetry.
I've spent the past week reading quite a lot of Poe, and while his output was somewhat uneven in terms of quality, my main takeaway is that he was a profoundly original and inventive writer who had a tremendous influence on later Western literature.
Robert Louis Stevenson borrowed from Poe in both Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (influenced by Poe's The Gold-Bug and William Wilson, respectively). Poe was the first to write detective fiction, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was based on Poe's detective Dupin. Jules Verne was heavily influenced by Poe's adventure tales, even writing a sequel to Poe's only novel. Twentieth-century horror master H.P. Lovecraft once said, "When I write stories, Edgar Allan Poe is my model." Alfred Hitchcock said it was Poe's stories that inspired him to start making suspense films. On top of that, Poe also claims one of the world's best-known poems, The Raven.
How many writers other than Shakespeare have been so influential across so many genres?
I've spent the past week reading quite a lot of Poe, and while his output was somewhat uneven in terms of quality, my main takeaway is that he was a profoundly original and inventive writer who had a tremendous influence on later Western literature.
Robert Louis Stevenson borrowed from Poe in both Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (influenced by Poe's The Gold-Bug and William Wilson, respectively). Poe was the first to write detective fiction, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was based on Poe's detective Dupin. Jules Verne was heavily influenced by Poe's adventure tales, even writing a sequel to Poe's only novel. Twentieth-century horror master H.P. Lovecraft once said, "When I write stories, Edgar Allan Poe is my model." Alfred Hitchcock said it was Poe's stories that inspired him to start making suspense films. On top of that, Poe also claims one of the world's best-known poems, The Raven.
How many writers other than Shakespeare have been so influential across so many genres?
January 19, 2020
I absolutely love Poe. As a child, one of my fondest memories involves his writings. We would frequently drive to South Georgia, mere 5 to 6 hours from the suburbs of Atlanta. My mother and I would always check out cassettes of books on tape from the library to pass the time. On a particularly dark, stormy night, she brought Poe into my life. From that car ride I was hooked. Always have been. Happy to read forever.
June 17, 2023
A little disappointed. Poe just didn't interest me as much as I wanted him too. A lot of his stories felt like they lacked direction and impact, sometimes causing me to nod off. The mysteries were more interesting than the others, but of course the Cask of Amontillado is a classic.
May 1, 2019
It's Poe....some are good some are great some are ho-hum...I like him.
December 15, 2024
On the plus side, I now catch a lot more references to his work in popular culture. And I appreciate what Poe did to develop entire genres of literature. But as stories themselves go I did not enjoy his writing. For every page of actual plot or character development or dialog there's three pages of narration and philosophizing to slog through to get to the point. It's less short stories and more essays that use made-up anecdotes as support for the theses. And what's with all the quotes and phrases in foreign languages that no editor feels like including a translation for? Maybe in Poe's time most of his readers were fully fluent in French and Latin, but to a modern reader those are just frustrating. In short, would I read more Poe? Nevermore.
August 26, 2014
As always, Poe remains the master of the super creepy tale. While the works of many of his gothic contemporaries have largely lost their bite when consumed by a modern audience, Poe's work still retains its ability to make your skin crawl.
Many of the stories contained within this volume are variations on some of Poe's favorite themes (e.g. live burials, doppelgangers, crimes of passion, and men who lose the women they love only to find them either reborn or transformed in some way) but each iteration of the theme is given new life, and at no point do you feel you're reading the same thing over and over. This is perhaps due to the fact that Poe's narrators are all very distinct, each bringing unique characteristics to the tales they unravel.
Some of the best stories in this book follow the exploits of Chevalier Auguste Dupin, Poe's remarkable detective, and his unnamed sidekick who narrates all the tales of their adventures. Dupin marks the beginning of the serialized heroic detective story. Without Dupin, it stands to reason that there would have been no Sherlock Holmes, no Shadow, and ultimately no Batman.
While there are other compilations of Poe's work, I prefer this volume for the way in which it compiles its contents, placing stories of similar thematic tone together, and for its overall look and feel. This book was a joy to read.
Many of the stories contained within this volume are variations on some of Poe's favorite themes (e.g. live burials, doppelgangers, crimes of passion, and men who lose the women they love only to find them either reborn or transformed in some way) but each iteration of the theme is given new life, and at no point do you feel you're reading the same thing over and over. This is perhaps due to the fact that Poe's narrators are all very distinct, each bringing unique characteristics to the tales they unravel.
Some of the best stories in this book follow the exploits of Chevalier Auguste Dupin, Poe's remarkable detective, and his unnamed sidekick who narrates all the tales of their adventures. Dupin marks the beginning of the serialized heroic detective story. Without Dupin, it stands to reason that there would have been no Sherlock Holmes, no Shadow, and ultimately no Batman.
While there are other compilations of Poe's work, I prefer this volume for the way in which it compiles its contents, placing stories of similar thematic tone together, and for its overall look and feel. This book was a joy to read.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews