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The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Special Coffee Table Style Book.
236 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1849
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,663 books26.6k 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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September 5, 2024
Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are the tales told by the raven on the longest winter night long after midnight…
Though it is impossible to name the most favourite tale now I remember when I read his stories first time in my childhood somehow I was hypnotized most by The Cask of Amontillado, probably because the festive atmosphere turns into the perfectly sinister one so unexpectedly.
Even now, due to their narrative power and chilling macabre storylines, such tales as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and many others remain unforgettable and matchless.
Ever since the cave man has been sitting by his primitive hearth, huddling close to the fire being afraid of every shadow, we still keep our primordial fear. And to win over this fear while reading dark tales is a great pleasure.
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Though it is impossible to name the most favourite tale now I remember when I read his stories first time in my childhood somehow I was hypnotized most by The Cask of Amontillado, probably because the festive atmosphere turns into the perfectly sinister one so unexpectedly.
We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
Even now, due to their narrative power and chilling macabre storylines, such tales as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and many others remain unforgettable and matchless.
Ever since the cave man has been sitting by his primitive hearth, huddling close to the fire being afraid of every shadow, we still keep our primordial fear. And to win over this fear while reading dark tales is a great pleasure.
October 14, 2023
‘Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.’
I simply cannot let the Halloween season pass without at least once pulling down the tales of Edgar Allan Poe to cozy myself into the unsettling words of the gothic master. A man that became much like a mythological figure in his own right, Poe is best known for his tales of horror and poems like The Raven that have embedded themselves into the public consciousness as classics of spooky storytelling, though he also wrote tales of early science-fiction and practically invented the mold of the detective story with his character Dupin. His stories are feasts of tone that grab you by heart and shake you around. A man with many enemies amongst his contemporaries, though beloved in France by authors such as Charles Baudelaire who wrote in his journal that each morning he prayed to God and Poe, Poe lives on as an essential figure of US Literature that still delights and frightens readers today.
I’ve always been particularly charmed by how the cruel intentions of his enemies to sully his name after Poe’s death essentially helped secure his notoriety and transform him into something not unlike a legend. ‘Poe is one of the writers who make us who we are,’ E.L. Doctorow wrote about Poe’s legacy on US literature, though for a long time stories about the man made him into a mockery to be scorned before people began to see these stories as part of what makes him such a fascinating individual. In fact, much of what we know about Poe today is through the framing of his enemies, which he had many including his own cousin whom he considered the rival for the affections of Virginia Eliza Clemm who later became his wife (and was…uhh…also his cousin) . Most notably is Rufus Wilmot Griswold, with whom Poe had a working relationship and even favorably reviewed Griswold’s anthology, though not favorably enough to Griswold’s tastes. Upon the death of Poe, Griswold published an obituary under the name Ludwig that began:
Griswold then convinced Poe’s mother-in-law to sign over the rights to all of Poe’s work to him and published a collected works along with a biography of Poe that was full of outright lies. He invented stories that depicted Poe as a drunkard that preyed on women for sodomy and finacial ruin amonst numerous outlandish claims of immorality and insanity, which was then bolstered by publishing Poe’s personal letters filled with fictional insertions of his own design. People were like wow this scary stories guy was a dangerous loon and overtime this was said less in disgust and more in comical appreciation, because people seem to love the idea that the artists behind inventive art are drug addled and unhinged. So the joke was on Griswold because practically nobody knows who he is and his plans to defame Poe actually solidified him as an iconic household name.
Speaking of Poe’s death, he was found in poor condition wearing clothes that were not his own and taken to a hospital where he would die a few days later (Oct 7, 1849). In the end, he repeatedly called out the name Reynolds—nobody is certain who that was—and his dying words were ‘Lord help my poor soul.’ All the medical records and his death certificate have been lost, so even in dying Poe has left us one last mystery to keep him in our memories.
“But what about his stories!?”you are probably saying, are those worth being an icon of literature? Depends on who you ask, really. Personally, I think yes. Red Death is an absolute banger of a story, Pit and the Pendulum is white-knuckle intensity, these hold up so well. Not all would agree. Aldous Huxley accused Poe’s style of vulgarity and bad taste, writing in an essay ‘we should find it hard to forgive, shall we say, the wearing of a diamond ring on every finger. Poe does the equivalent of this…we notice the solecism and shudder.’ He questioned the French writers, who extolled Poe such as Paul Valéry saying ‘Poe is the only impeccable writer. He is never mistaken.’, wondering if they simply had no ear for English, though literary critic Harold Bloom has asserted that Poe might actually translate quite well and read as more poetic in translation. Though I find that much of Poe’s charm comes from how nearly overdramatic much of the prose can be, and while admittedly I’m not big on his actual poetry, it often reads like a gimmick that works well. I mean ‘O God! can I not save / One from the pitiless wave? / Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?’ does in fact slap.
There are a few techniques that Poe really works with that help make his stories so unsettling or successful. Poe was a believer in what has been termed Poe’s Single Effect Theory, which is drawn from his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales:
Basically, all elements of a short story should be cohesive. You’ve probably heard of this in literature courses. While I can’t say all of his stories achieve this, you’ll find in the best of them a noble attempt to pull it off, Cask of Amontillado and Fall of the House of Usher being of the most successful. I mean, look at the opening to Usher: ‘It was a dark and soundless day near the end of the year, and clouds were hanging low in the heavens,’ and this melancholy of grayness and dread permeate every note of the story. In Cask, my personal favorite with it’s incredible opening sentence ‘the thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge,’ we have all the elements right away: injury, insult and vengeance, all of which will be visited upon Fortunado as a reversal, something I’ll speak more on in a moment.
So with Poe, we have tone being so central to his stories. The Masque of the Red Death drives almost on tone alone, details compounding upon details until the big reveal at the end with the falling action literally being everyone falling down super dead. Half the enjoyment is just in the atmosphere though, especially in stories like The Tell-Tale Heart where most of the narrative is insisting that he is not ‘a madman’ and listing all the ways he meticulously plots and executes his murder as a sure sign he is in full control of his faculties. It isn’t convincing, of course, and the irony of it is practically the original “could a depressed person make this?!” meme. Here, let’s revise it:
Anyways, what works so well to make Heart frightening is less the preternatural elements but the absurdity of impetus; like in Cask where it is the vague ‘thousand injuries’ that like, okay, were there really buddy?, in Heart the whole purpose of the crime was because he didn’t like this old guy’s blind eye. A guy he even said is rather lovely. In this eye though, the perceived ugliness might just be an image of himself he finds so threatening. Much like in Black Cat where the aggression is an outward expression of inward hatred (alcoholism in that one). And the truly terrifying idea is not the beating heart but that one might betray themselves in a rapid turn of events that leads the narrator to suddenly betray his own crime to the police. All that careful planning to find an uncontrollable urge that takes you down from within. Scary.
Another aspect of Poe is the unreliable narrator, and it was Cask that I had a teacher use to teach this technique. Fun fact, the term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth, and while Poe isn’t the first to use the technique he certainly perfected it and without a term for it yet I like to imagine people in 1846 reading Cask and after some pondering proclaiming ‘wait a gosh darn minute, that rat bastard was trying to pull one over on me, too!” Because you gotta shout your epiphanies.
But Cask is another perfect example of a different motif in Poe, the idea of the double or mirrored self. This is best exemplified in William Wilson, a story much loved by Fyodor Dostoevsky I am told (he did love a good Double narrative), where in slaying his double who is a physical manifestation of his own conscience, he slays himself. Pretty great stuff, and indicative of how much the degradation of the self is a theme throughout Poe. In Cask we have the reversal of fortunes between the aptly named Fortunato and our narrator, Montressor. I love this story, it starts off playing on Fortunato’s ego and proceeds through a lot of humorous moments of Montressor toying with him giving clues along the way like foreshadowing of the deeds to come. I mean, he literally shows him the tool with which he will wall Fortunato up with claiming to be a Mason and he says his family crest is a heel crushing a snake that is biting the heel. When Fortunato asks his family motto he replies ‘Nemo me impune lacessit’ (no one attacks me with impunity) to which Fortunato responds ‘good!’ This is pure gold, honestly. But the crest is so symbolic of them as a sort of intertwined double, together in injury. While one could say Montressor is the foot stomping out the serpent that bit him, I suggest it is the opposite: the foot as the unwitting beast totally unaware it had stepped upon the serpent until too late when the poisoned fangs have already sunk in. This seems supported in the text as Fortunato seems to only casually know who Montressor is, leading you to question the ‘thousand injuries’ he has supposedly inflicted and if they were an act of malice as Montressor seems to claim or simply collateral damage. The mirroring is mocked as the pair both howl at one another, Montressor repeating his final words ‘for the love of God’ back to him.
I love most how, as in this story, Poe is always addressing you, the reader. In lines such as ‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul,’ he makes us complicit but also implies that we, too, are capable of dark deeds. The monster is already in us, and he is poking it with his stick.
‘I had walled the monster up within the tomb!’
The catacombs in Cask are very much a Gothic trope where mysterious passageways and hidden chambers build unease on the idea of enclosed spaces as the claustrophobia of death closing in around you. Motifs abound, with spooky buildings, sudden death and murder, and lots of disease. Another motif that appears throughout Poe’s work is that of the dead woman in her tomb, which then hints at the idea of unattainable perfection as characters such as the speaker in the poem Annabel Lee long for a love lost to death, perfect in the memory that cannot age like the living, cannot argue against him, cannot spurn him. He even sleeps with her corpse, who can’t say no. It’s super creepy stuff, so much so that Vladimir Nabokov does a bit of a retelling of it as the opening in Lolita for the narrator to explain the way he is. House of Usher has Roderick and Madeline fall into death in one another's arms after she had previously been walled up alive like Fortunato (or the wife’s body in Black Cat along with the screaming cat).
Death is, in fact, the central horror in Poe’s tales of horror. It is the center of the Maelstrom like in the story of that name, one considered an early work of science fiction. Which like, yea, dude wrote more than just horror, with that story being the first of what Poe termed his ‘tales of ratiocination’. Dupin was a precursor to serialized detective stories like Sherlock Holmes and stories like The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ using logic and reasoning to come to a conclusion about a mystery with the detective not solving the crime for job or money but for the desire to solve a puzzle. The third Dupin story, The Purloined Letter is often considered an allegory for literary interpretation and sparked a debate a hundred years after publication between the great Jacques of criticism: Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. Lacan’s argument that the contents of the letter don’t actually matter is an idea we see often, such as the suitcase in the movie Pulp Fiction. Lest it go unmentioned, Poe’s one actual novel was a seafaring story. So the guy had a wide range, his horror tales being the ones that have mostly remained in the public conscience.
But I’ve taken far too much of your time now that could have been spent reading some Poe. It is almost Halloween, so either revisit a favorite or try him for the first time. Read it aloud in a Vincent Price voice, or maybe a thick Boston accent (Poe was from Boston, who knows). And of course I’m going to five star this collection. Who am I to scoff “well it wasn’t perfect enough for me’ like I’m adjusting my tie and tweed jacket, and as we’ve learned from Poe being insufficiently favorable can lead to being forever known as a drunk pervert in your own biography, so 5 stars it is.
5/5
I simply cannot let the Halloween season pass without at least once pulling down the tales of Edgar Allan Poe to cozy myself into the unsettling words of the gothic master. A man that became much like a mythological figure in his own right, Poe is best known for his tales of horror and poems like The Raven that have embedded themselves into the public consciousness as classics of spooky storytelling, though he also wrote tales of early science-fiction and practically invented the mold of the detective story with his character Dupin. His stories are feasts of tone that grab you by heart and shake you around. A man with many enemies amongst his contemporaries, though beloved in France by authors such as Charles Baudelaire who wrote in his journal that each morning he prayed to God and Poe, Poe lives on as an essential figure of US Literature that still delights and frightens readers today.
I’ve always been particularly charmed by how the cruel intentions of his enemies to sully his name after Poe’s death essentially helped secure his notoriety and transform him into something not unlike a legend. ‘Poe is one of the writers who make us who we are,’ E.L. Doctorow wrote about Poe’s legacy on US literature, though for a long time stories about the man made him into a mockery to be scorned before people began to see these stories as part of what makes him such a fascinating individual. In fact, much of what we know about Poe today is through the framing of his enemies, which he had many including his own cousin whom he considered the rival for the affections of Virginia Eliza Clemm who later became his wife (and was…uhh…also his cousin) . Most notably is Rufus Wilmot Griswold, with whom Poe had a working relationship and even favorably reviewed Griswold’s anthology, though not favorably enough to Griswold’s tastes. Upon the death of Poe, Griswold published an obituary under the name Ludwig that began:
’Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.’
Griswold then convinced Poe’s mother-in-law to sign over the rights to all of Poe’s work to him and published a collected works along with a biography of Poe that was full of outright lies. He invented stories that depicted Poe as a drunkard that preyed on women for sodomy and finacial ruin amonst numerous outlandish claims of immorality and insanity, which was then bolstered by publishing Poe’s personal letters filled with fictional insertions of his own design. People were like wow this scary stories guy was a dangerous loon and overtime this was said less in disgust and more in comical appreciation, because people seem to love the idea that the artists behind inventive art are drug addled and unhinged. So the joke was on Griswold because practically nobody knows who he is and his plans to defame Poe actually solidified him as an iconic household name.
Speaking of Poe’s death, he was found in poor condition wearing clothes that were not his own and taken to a hospital where he would die a few days later (Oct 7, 1849). In the end, he repeatedly called out the name Reynolds—nobody is certain who that was—and his dying words were ‘Lord help my poor soul.’ All the medical records and his death certificate have been lost, so even in dying Poe has left us one last mystery to keep him in our memories.
“But what about his stories!?”you are probably saying, are those worth being an icon of literature? Depends on who you ask, really. Personally, I think yes. Red Death is an absolute banger of a story, Pit and the Pendulum is white-knuckle intensity, these hold up so well. Not all would agree. Aldous Huxley accused Poe’s style of vulgarity and bad taste, writing in an essay ‘we should find it hard to forgive, shall we say, the wearing of a diamond ring on every finger. Poe does the equivalent of this…we notice the solecism and shudder.’ He questioned the French writers, who extolled Poe such as Paul Valéry saying ‘Poe is the only impeccable writer. He is never mistaken.’, wondering if they simply had no ear for English, though literary critic Harold Bloom has asserted that Poe might actually translate quite well and read as more poetic in translation. Though I find that much of Poe’s charm comes from how nearly overdramatic much of the prose can be, and while admittedly I’m not big on his actual poetry, it often reads like a gimmick that works well. I mean ‘O God! can I not save / One from the pitiless wave? / Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?’ does in fact slap.
There are a few techniques that Poe really works with that help make his stories so unsettling or successful. Poe was a believer in what has been termed Poe’s Single Effect Theory, which is drawn from his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales:
‘A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents–he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.’
Basically, all elements of a short story should be cohesive. You’ve probably heard of this in literature courses. While I can’t say all of his stories achieve this, you’ll find in the best of them a noble attempt to pull it off, Cask of Amontillado and Fall of the House of Usher being of the most successful. I mean, look at the opening to Usher: ‘It was a dark and soundless day near the end of the year, and clouds were hanging low in the heavens,’ and this melancholy of grayness and dread permeate every note of the story. In Cask, my personal favorite with it’s incredible opening sentence ‘the thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge,’ we have all the elements right away: injury, insult and vengeance, all of which will be visited upon Fortunado as a reversal, something I’ll speak more on in a moment.
So with Poe, we have tone being so central to his stories. The Masque of the Red Death drives almost on tone alone, details compounding upon details until the big reveal at the end with the falling action literally being everyone falling down super dead. Half the enjoyment is just in the atmosphere though, especially in stories like The Tell-Tale Heart where most of the narrative is insisting that he is not ‘a madman’ and listing all the ways he meticulously plots and executes his murder as a sure sign he is in full control of his faculties. It isn’t convincing, of course, and the irony of it is practically the original “could a depressed person make this?!” meme. Here, let’s revise it:
Anyways, what works so well to make Heart frightening is less the preternatural elements but the absurdity of impetus; like in Cask where it is the vague ‘thousand injuries’ that like, okay, were there really buddy?, in Heart the whole purpose of the crime was because he didn’t like this old guy’s blind eye. A guy he even said is rather lovely. In this eye though, the perceived ugliness might just be an image of himself he finds so threatening. Much like in Black Cat where the aggression is an outward expression of inward hatred (alcoholism in that one). And the truly terrifying idea is not the beating heart but that one might betray themselves in a rapid turn of events that leads the narrator to suddenly betray his own crime to the police. All that careful planning to find an uncontrollable urge that takes you down from within. Scary.
Another aspect of Poe is the unreliable narrator, and it was Cask that I had a teacher use to teach this technique. Fun fact, the term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth, and while Poe isn’t the first to use the technique he certainly perfected it and without a term for it yet I like to imagine people in 1846 reading Cask and after some pondering proclaiming ‘wait a gosh darn minute, that rat bastard was trying to pull one over on me, too!” Because you gotta shout your epiphanies.
But Cask is another perfect example of a different motif in Poe, the idea of the double or mirrored self. This is best exemplified in William Wilson, a story much loved by Fyodor Dostoevsky I am told (he did love a good Double narrative), where in slaying his double who is a physical manifestation of his own conscience, he slays himself. Pretty great stuff, and indicative of how much the degradation of the self is a theme throughout Poe. In Cask we have the reversal of fortunes between the aptly named Fortunato and our narrator, Montressor. I love this story, it starts off playing on Fortunato’s ego and proceeds through a lot of humorous moments of Montressor toying with him giving clues along the way like foreshadowing of the deeds to come. I mean, he literally shows him the tool with which he will wall Fortunato up with claiming to be a Mason and he says his family crest is a heel crushing a snake that is biting the heel. When Fortunato asks his family motto he replies ‘Nemo me impune lacessit’ (no one attacks me with impunity) to which Fortunato responds ‘good!’ This is pure gold, honestly. But the crest is so symbolic of them as a sort of intertwined double, together in injury. While one could say Montressor is the foot stomping out the serpent that bit him, I suggest it is the opposite: the foot as the unwitting beast totally unaware it had stepped upon the serpent until too late when the poisoned fangs have already sunk in. This seems supported in the text as Fortunato seems to only casually know who Montressor is, leading you to question the ‘thousand injuries’ he has supposedly inflicted and if they were an act of malice as Montressor seems to claim or simply collateral damage. The mirroring is mocked as the pair both howl at one another, Montressor repeating his final words ‘for the love of God’ back to him.
I love most how, as in this story, Poe is always addressing you, the reader. In lines such as ‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul,’ he makes us complicit but also implies that we, too, are capable of dark deeds. The monster is already in us, and he is poking it with his stick.
‘I had walled the monster up within the tomb!’
The catacombs in Cask are very much a Gothic trope where mysterious passageways and hidden chambers build unease on the idea of enclosed spaces as the claustrophobia of death closing in around you. Motifs abound, with spooky buildings, sudden death and murder, and lots of disease. Another motif that appears throughout Poe’s work is that of the dead woman in her tomb, which then hints at the idea of unattainable perfection as characters such as the speaker in the poem Annabel Lee long for a love lost to death, perfect in the memory that cannot age like the living, cannot argue against him, cannot spurn him. He even sleeps with her corpse, who can’t say no. It’s super creepy stuff, so much so that Vladimir Nabokov does a bit of a retelling of it as the opening in Lolita for the narrator to explain the way he is. House of Usher has Roderick and Madeline fall into death in one another's arms after she had previously been walled up alive like Fortunato (or the wife’s body in Black Cat along with the screaming cat).
Death is, in fact, the central horror in Poe’s tales of horror. It is the center of the Maelstrom like in the story of that name, one considered an early work of science fiction. Which like, yea, dude wrote more than just horror, with that story being the first of what Poe termed his ‘tales of ratiocination’. Dupin was a precursor to serialized detective stories like Sherlock Holmes and stories like The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ using logic and reasoning to come to a conclusion about a mystery with the detective not solving the crime for job or money but for the desire to solve a puzzle. The third Dupin story, The Purloined Letter is often considered an allegory for literary interpretation and sparked a debate a hundred years after publication between the great Jacques of criticism: Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. Lacan’s argument that the contents of the letter don’t actually matter is an idea we see often, such as the suitcase in the movie Pulp Fiction. Lest it go unmentioned, Poe’s one actual novel was a seafaring story. So the guy had a wide range, his horror tales being the ones that have mostly remained in the public conscience.
But I’ve taken far too much of your time now that could have been spent reading some Poe. It is almost Halloween, so either revisit a favorite or try him for the first time. Read it aloud in a Vincent Price voice, or maybe a thick Boston accent (Poe was from Boston, who knows). And of course I’m going to five star this collection. Who am I to scoff “well it wasn’t perfect enough for me’ like I’m adjusting my tie and tweed jacket, and as we’ve learned from Poe being insufficiently favorable can lead to being forever known as a drunk pervert in your own biography, so 5 stars it is.
5/5
November 28, 2020
Love, love Edgar Allan Poe.
I so much enjoy reading anything by him. Every single time, I'm blown away. However, even with an author I enjoy so much, I do have a favourite and that's the Raven.
I still remember a paper I wrote about in High school when I compared the differences between the original and the different Czech translations.
To this day, I completely lost count how many times I've read it.
Anyway, I own only two complete works and those are this one and then Complete work of Shakespeare and you bet that both of them are on my nightstand all the time.
I so much enjoy reading anything by him. Every single time, I'm blown away. However, even with an author I enjoy so much, I do have a favourite and that's the Raven.
I still remember a paper I wrote about in High school when I compared the differences between the original and the different Czech translations.
To this day, I completely lost count how many times I've read it.
Anyway, I own only two complete works and those are this one and then Complete work of Shakespeare and you bet that both of them are on my nightstand all the time.
June 26, 2017
I’ve been reading this book for almost three years and it feels so good to finally have finished it!
I was surprised by what I found in here. Poe was slightly different to what I thought. He is very much shrouded in shadow and the macabre, at least, his more successful stories and poems were. But there were also some very basic stories in here, some that felt like they weren’t even written by the same person. For every great piece of literature, there were two mediocre ones. I disliked the crime stories in particular. The best ones, for me, were the ones where the narrator laments a lost love on the cusp of insanity: these stories were simply beautiful.
Here’s my top two, the only two I consider to be literary perfection:
The Raven
Shall we descend into madness? Shall we be haunted by our own desires? Shall we be consumed by that terrible facet of life known only as death? Shall we cling to what cannot be reanimated? Shall we wish for a return of something that has long been in darkness?
Shall we become obliterated by the brutal finality of such a statement as “nevermore?”
Lenore has gone. She has departed from this life, and is permanently out of the reach of the man. The raven represents the solidarity of this. Despite how much he longs for the impossible, despite how much he hopes for something that could never occur, he still has that inclination that the fantastical could happen: he has to believe that she could come back. And the raven represents the voice of reason, the voice of actuality. And it kills him. It is pain, despair, melancholy and a spiritual death all rolled into one haunting feathery package.
He rebels against this voice of rationality. He knows the voice speaks the truth, but he cannot simply accept it. He has lost something vital; he has lost part of himself that will never grace his presence again. And he clings to hope, a false hope such as it is. The raven smashes this to oblivion; it destroys any last semblance of the miraculous occurring. It makes the man realise that this is life, not some whimsical world where nothing bad ever happens. People die. People we love die. Nothing can change that. Lenore will never walk through his chamber door again, and the reality drives him into madness. It shatters his life.
”And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted- nevermore!”
His soul will never lift anymore; hope shall never be lifted anymore. By the end of the poem he has full realised the reality of the situation. The raven, the dark bird of harsh truth, the harbinger of the words he simply doesn’t want to hear, has become demonised. It has become the very object he did not want to face; he created a sense of longing to protect himself from the emotional loss of Lenore, and this bubble of falsehood has been burst. Reality sets in, and it is a fate worse than death. It is one of persecution and mental chaos as the bird is simply unable to supply the man with all his answers. He is driven mad by the unknown.
The man in the poem has lost “Lenore.” But, what is this Lenore? Is she a woman? Is she this man’s lost love? Or is she something much, much, more? I think on the surface level of the poem she is his dead wife. But the archaic references speak of something else. Lenore could perhaps be a universal suggestion of a lost sense of self or even humanity. We are no longer what we once were. It is also rather significant that the man is persecuted only by the natural world. Very much in the Romanticism vein, man stands aside from nature. He has become something different with his modernisation and industrialisation.
He walks outside his nature. And Poe, being an anti-transcendentalism thinker (a dark romantic), demonstrates that life isn’t all sunshine and roses, and nor could it ever be. It is pessimism in full force, and although I strongly disagree with the outlook on life, and appreciate the idealistic utopia offered in the poetry of Percy Shelley and other Romantics much more, I do love the dark beauty of this poem. The finality of the phrase “nevermore” is nothing short of maddening reality for our lost man. It is the end of hope.
Ligeia
If a mind has found the most true and profound bliss what happens when it’s taken away?
Well, the simple answer is it doesn’t work anymore, at least not very well. The narrator of this marvellous short story experiences a whole host of emotions and mental states after his loss. Firstly, he is hit with the expected wave of melancholy fuelled by his understandable grief; secondly, he feels the slow calm breeze of acceptance; thirdly, and finaly, he is savaged by an unrealised state of delusion and fantasy. In this, Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates his true mastery of writing a character in different states of mental stability. Needless to say, he’s a remarkable writer.
In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - and airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen.”
The narrator cannot be blamed for his fragility. He has lost his world: he has lost his beloved Ligeia. She was everything to him, and they both knew it. Nothing could lessen the blow of her death; nothing could take the pain away of her upcoming demise: nothing could save his mind in a world without her. They were living in harmony; their souls had achieved happiness and love; they were two lesser beings of one greater soul: they were at peace in their own transcendental plane, until she died. So, the narrator’s sense of self awareness and actuality has been destroyed. He is left with the tatters of a wonderful experience, and his own delusion.
I recommend looking at the following quote and considering exactly who is speaking, and why he would conjure up such an image. Perhaps, he didn’t fantasise this. Maybe this is paranormal. I do love the multiplicity of its interpretation.
This short story is a marvel. It appears confusing and contradictory, but if you stop and consider who is actually speaking then its true nature is revealed. Admittedly, on my first read I was a little lost, though after a second read I began to see it for what it was. This is not as approachable as some of Poe’s other works, and it really isn’t an advisable starting point for the author. But, the short story is wonderful, truly wonderful. It highlights the working of the mind in a state of sheer depravity; it is disturbing and brilliant.
Postscript
It seems to me that the more popular stories were the more effective ones. The only one with little renown that was brilliant was Ligeia. I’m glad I read the entire thing, but some of the works were entirely forgettable. There two, though, will be works I certainly will be reading again in the future.
I was surprised by what I found in here. Poe was slightly different to what I thought. He is very much shrouded in shadow and the macabre, at least, his more successful stories and poems were. But there were also some very basic stories in here, some that felt like they weren’t even written by the same person. For every great piece of literature, there were two mediocre ones. I disliked the crime stories in particular. The best ones, for me, were the ones where the narrator laments a lost love on the cusp of insanity: these stories were simply beautiful.
Here’s my top two, the only two I consider to be literary perfection:
The Raven
Shall we descend into madness? Shall we be haunted by our own desires? Shall we be consumed by that terrible facet of life known only as death? Shall we cling to what cannot be reanimated? Shall we wish for a return of something that has long been in darkness?
Shall we become obliterated by the brutal finality of such a statement as “nevermore?”
Lenore has gone. She has departed from this life, and is permanently out of the reach of the man. The raven represents the solidarity of this. Despite how much he longs for the impossible, despite how much he hopes for something that could never occur, he still has that inclination that the fantastical could happen: he has to believe that she could come back. And the raven represents the voice of reason, the voice of actuality. And it kills him. It is pain, despair, melancholy and a spiritual death all rolled into one haunting feathery package.
He rebels against this voice of rationality. He knows the voice speaks the truth, but he cannot simply accept it. He has lost something vital; he has lost part of himself that will never grace his presence again. And he clings to hope, a false hope such as it is. The raven smashes this to oblivion; it destroys any last semblance of the miraculous occurring. It makes the man realise that this is life, not some whimsical world where nothing bad ever happens. People die. People we love die. Nothing can change that. Lenore will never walk through his chamber door again, and the reality drives him into madness. It shatters his life.
”And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted- nevermore!”
His soul will never lift anymore; hope shall never be lifted anymore. By the end of the poem he has full realised the reality of the situation. The raven, the dark bird of harsh truth, the harbinger of the words he simply doesn’t want to hear, has become demonised. It has become the very object he did not want to face; he created a sense of longing to protect himself from the emotional loss of Lenore, and this bubble of falsehood has been burst. Reality sets in, and it is a fate worse than death. It is one of persecution and mental chaos as the bird is simply unable to supply the man with all his answers. He is driven mad by the unknown.
The man in the poem has lost “Lenore.” But, what is this Lenore? Is she a woman? Is she this man’s lost love? Or is she something much, much, more? I think on the surface level of the poem she is his dead wife. But the archaic references speak of something else. Lenore could perhaps be a universal suggestion of a lost sense of self or even humanity. We are no longer what we once were. It is also rather significant that the man is persecuted only by the natural world. Very much in the Romanticism vein, man stands aside from nature. He has become something different with his modernisation and industrialisation.
He walks outside his nature. And Poe, being an anti-transcendentalism thinker (a dark romantic), demonstrates that life isn’t all sunshine and roses, and nor could it ever be. It is pessimism in full force, and although I strongly disagree with the outlook on life, and appreciate the idealistic utopia offered in the poetry of Percy Shelley and other Romantics much more, I do love the dark beauty of this poem. The finality of the phrase “nevermore” is nothing short of maddening reality for our lost man. It is the end of hope.
Ligeia
If a mind has found the most true and profound bliss what happens when it’s taken away?
Well, the simple answer is it doesn’t work anymore, at least not very well. The narrator of this marvellous short story experiences a whole host of emotions and mental states after his loss. Firstly, he is hit with the expected wave of melancholy fuelled by his understandable grief; secondly, he feels the slow calm breeze of acceptance; thirdly, and finaly, he is savaged by an unrealised state of delusion and fantasy. In this, Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates his true mastery of writing a character in different states of mental stability. Needless to say, he’s a remarkable writer.
In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - and airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen.”
The narrator cannot be blamed for his fragility. He has lost his world: he has lost his beloved Ligeia. She was everything to him, and they both knew it. Nothing could lessen the blow of her death; nothing could take the pain away of her upcoming demise: nothing could save his mind in a world without her. They were living in harmony; their souls had achieved happiness and love; they were two lesser beings of one greater soul: they were at peace in their own transcendental plane, until she died. So, the narrator’s sense of self awareness and actuality has been destroyed. He is left with the tatters of a wonderful experience, and his own delusion.
I recommend looking at the following quote and considering exactly who is speaking, and why he would conjure up such an image. Perhaps, he didn’t fantasise this. Maybe this is paranormal. I do love the multiplicity of its interpretation.
This short story is a marvel. It appears confusing and contradictory, but if you stop and consider who is actually speaking then its true nature is revealed. Admittedly, on my first read I was a little lost, though after a second read I began to see it for what it was. This is not as approachable as some of Poe’s other works, and it really isn’t an advisable starting point for the author. But, the short story is wonderful, truly wonderful. It highlights the working of the mind in a state of sheer depravity; it is disturbing and brilliant.
Postscript
It seems to me that the more popular stories were the more effective ones. The only one with little renown that was brilliant was Ligeia. I’m glad I read the entire thing, but some of the works were entirely forgettable. There two, though, will be works I certainly will be reading again in the future.
January 5, 2008
How could I not love this book? Shortly after reading Poe's complete works as a teenager, my family was transferred to Fort Monroe in southern Virginia. While waiting for permanent housing, I ended up staying in the house (and the very bedroom) that Poe had been in while he served on the base. Pulling out this book and reading it in the very space where Poe had suffered through depression and anxiety was exhilarating. While I realized the morbid nature of my glee, it somehow seemed appropriate as I lay awake at nights praying to hear that telltale ticking.
As an adult, I have come to realize that my love of Poe's horror comes from the fact that he focuses not on the gore on modern horror, but rather on the shocking indelicacy of human potential. I sometimes think of him as the Gothic forefather of Anthony Robbins.
As an adult, I have come to realize that my love of Poe's horror comes from the fact that he focuses not on the gore on modern horror, but rather on the shocking indelicacy of human potential. I sometimes think of him as the Gothic forefather of Anthony Robbins.
February 11, 2022
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the OG's when it comes to macabre literature. His name alone screams angst.
I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath-little of Earth in it-
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:
I mourn not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you sorrow for my fate
Who am a passer by.
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that tower'd around.
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, lie a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh-but smile no more.
The perfect read for cozy winter nights. Feed your soul with these beautiful words.
August 15, 2020
Tormented
The macabre and gruesome gothic style of Edgar Allen Poe is timeless and the author holds his place as one of the greatest horror authors. Ever! There are various collections of Edgar Allen Poe available, providing complete coverage of his short stories, poems, essays and his novel. This latest collection, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe, provides an introduction from Daniel Stashower who gives a very interesting overview of Poe’s life and his bizarre and unsettling death. His death followed a strange set of events where he was found collapsed outside a tavern in Baltimore and then treated in the Washington College Hospital for drunkenness where he remained delirious and agitated suggesting something untoward happened him. He passed away muttering the words “Lord help my poor soul.”
Poe’s fascination with dark, sinister tales gives us classics such as The Pit and the Pendulum, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat.
The rating is difficult because, for the literary contribution of Edgar Allen Poe, it would be 5 stars but for the practical use of the electronic book, it would be 2 stars. I can only imagine this collection is meant solely for hardcopy. I would like to thank Quarto Publishing Group – Rock Point and NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC in return for an honest review.
The macabre and gruesome gothic style of Edgar Allen Poe is timeless and the author holds his place as one of the greatest horror authors. Ever! There are various collections of Edgar Allen Poe available, providing complete coverage of his short stories, poems, essays and his novel. This latest collection, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe, provides an introduction from Daniel Stashower who gives a very interesting overview of Poe’s life and his bizarre and unsettling death. His death followed a strange set of events where he was found collapsed outside a tavern in Baltimore and then treated in the Washington College Hospital for drunkenness where he remained delirious and agitated suggesting something untoward happened him. He passed away muttering the words “Lord help my poor soul.”
Poe’s fascination with dark, sinister tales gives us classics such as The Pit and the Pendulum, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat.
“Down—steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right—to the left—far and wide—with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart, with the stealthy pace of the tiger.”Along with the seventy-three short stories, essays and a novel, he wrote forty-nine poems which were often fuelled with his alcoholism and difficulty in finding a female partner. His poem Annabel Lee may have been inspired by four different women he was with during that period. His most famous poem is the brilliant Raven
The Pit and the Pendulum
“And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sittingAs a collection, this book is complete with his short stories and poems, the introduction provides a fascinating insight into Poe and there is a useful timeline for his works. My big criticism of this Advanced Reader Copy is that it is only available for the Adobe Digital Editions application or the new NetGalley app, both of which are impossible to read 'PDF' files using a smartphone or tablet, and are not available for the Kindle. I already own a complete set of works of Edgar Allen Poe so for the stories I could switch to that version and use a computer to read the pdf file for the Introduction and other material specific to this publication. Which somehow defeats the purpose.
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!”
The Raven
The rating is difficult because, for the literary contribution of Edgar Allen Poe, it would be 5 stars but for the practical use of the electronic book, it would be 2 stars. I can only imagine this collection is meant solely for hardcopy. I would like to thank Quarto Publishing Group – Rock Point and NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC in return for an honest review.
February 12, 2017
This is one of the only books I have left that belonged to my grandfather and it's one of the best. It contains stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe. Sections include: Tales of Mystery and Horror, Humor and Satire, Flights and Fantasies, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and many poems including Annabel Lee, Alone, and my favorite, A Dream Within a Dream.
5*****
5*****
June 20, 2017
I'm going for a 3.5 stars. I must be the only person in the known world that hasn't 5 starred Poe. I figured I would be a 5 star.
Either way, I'm just going to list the stories and poems I did enjoy. Although, I can't read my handwriting so now I have to go through the book. Well, I guess I could just look at the Contents at the front. Duh, if I can still read my handwriting. I don't know why I wrote it on freaking post-its!
Stories
1. The Murders In The Rue Morgue
2. The Mystery of Marie Roget
3. Ligeia
4. The Tell-Tale Heart
5. MS. Found in a Bottle
6. Berenice
7. The Fall of the House of Usher
8. The Pit and the Pendulum
9. Morella
10. The Oblong Box
11. The Premature Burial
12. The Imp of the Perverse
13. The Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar
14. Hop-Frog
I basically liked all of the Tales of Mystery and Horror as you can see. Not all of them though. I didn't really like much else but some Poems.
The Poems
1. Annabel Lee
2. The City in the Sea
3. The Sleeper
4. Lenore
5. The Raven
6. Ulalume
7. To Helen
8. For Annie
9. The Bells
10. The Valley of Unrest
11. Bridal Ballad to
12. Evening Star
13. The Haunted Palace
Uggg, those are not in order. I had a hard time reading my writing and finding them on the contents pages. Who cares if they are in order, it's my OCD.
I'm glad to all of those that love all of his stuff.
Either way, I'm just going to list the stories and poems I did enjoy. Although, I can't read my handwriting so now I have to go through the book. Well, I guess I could just look at the Contents at the front. Duh, if I can still read my handwriting. I don't know why I wrote it on freaking post-its!
Stories
1. The Murders In The Rue Morgue
2. The Mystery of Marie Roget
3. Ligeia
4. The Tell-Tale Heart
5. MS. Found in a Bottle
6. Berenice
7. The Fall of the House of Usher
8. The Pit and the Pendulum
9. Morella
10. The Oblong Box
11. The Premature Burial
12. The Imp of the Perverse
13. The Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar
14. Hop-Frog
I basically liked all of the Tales of Mystery and Horror as you can see. Not all of them though. I didn't really like much else but some Poems.
The Poems
1. Annabel Lee
2. The City in the Sea
3. The Sleeper
4. Lenore
5. The Raven
6. Ulalume
7. To Helen
8. For Annie
9. The Bells
10. The Valley of Unrest
11. Bridal Ballad to
12. Evening Star
13. The Haunted Palace
Uggg, those are not in order. I had a hard time reading my writing and finding them on the contents pages. Who cares if they are in order, it's my OCD.
I'm glad to all of those that love all of his stuff.
July 19, 2023
Edgar Allan Poe, is best known for the Raven, still the greatest and most famous American poem ever written (in my opinion).Inventor of the detective story, master of the short story, especially the macabre, writer, editor , critic, essayist, gambler, beggar, drunk, drug user, widower, and manic depressive.In other words, an American original. A hard life he lived partly his own fault however being an orphan wasn't conducive for happiness in the harsh 1800's . Still you could not help but root for him. A brilliant man full of angst he could never escape from his doom sadly quite predictable. NEVERTHELESS his SHORT LIFE left US many splendid reads. Poe's only novel, in 1838, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, is included in this book. Which I will review... The strange book has a unearthly view as if this was on another planet, anyone seeing the pages fly by will feel the creepiness a ghoulish atmosphere falls on the unfortunate victims . His great poems and splendid stories no one else could write so well, oozing the weird and ...
you my friends must find yourself.. Young Pym befriends Augustus, the son of a sea captain. Wanting adventure , this teenager has his friend stow him away, in his father's ship.But something goes wrong . After many days hidden and starving, Arthur leaves his secret place and discovers there has been a mutiny on board! Luckily Augustus is still alive and gives his friend food and water.The mutineers have a power struggle on ship causing much turmoil. When a hurricane hits, most of the drunken crew perish, with the vessel capsizing.The survivors cling to the bottom of the ship, for their lives, which is now the top. Finally picked up after many days at sea by the Jane Guy and landing in Africa. Later they go to the Antarctic and Arthur Pym disappears in that vast, lonely , cold land. Will he ever be seen again? This novel's failure caused Poe not to write another a shame for it was too weird for the 19th century but not for now...
you my friends must find yourself.. Young Pym befriends Augustus, the son of a sea captain. Wanting adventure , this teenager has his friend stow him away, in his father's ship.But something goes wrong . After many days hidden and starving, Arthur leaves his secret place and discovers there has been a mutiny on board! Luckily Augustus is still alive and gives his friend food and water.The mutineers have a power struggle on ship causing much turmoil. When a hurricane hits, most of the drunken crew perish, with the vessel capsizing.The survivors cling to the bottom of the ship, for their lives, which is now the top. Finally picked up after many days at sea by the Jane Guy and landing in Africa. Later they go to the Antarctic and Arthur Pym disappears in that vast, lonely , cold land. Will he ever be seen again? This novel's failure caused Poe not to write another a shame for it was too weird for the 19th century but not for now...
December 16, 2016
I know I've read too much Poe in too short a period of time when words like adduce and avidity have crept into my everyday conversation. At a Holiday party this week I actually said "That is a capital cheese" and couldn't understand why strangers looked at me funny. Reader beware, a Poe=lit infection is virulent.
If you've spent any amount of time with Poe you'll agree with me that he composes sentences with such a solid structure that if you were to diagram one of them with pointy sticks instead of pencil lines you could create an impregnable breastworks. Somehow I feel that if Americans spoke the way that Poe's characters do that we would have meaningful discourse rather than blathery tweets. But I digress, let's take a stroll through Poe, shall we?
First I want to talk about this absolutely gorgeous volume I picked up from Barnes & Noble sometime in the mid '90s. Take a look at this beauty: engraved cover, heavy acid free paper and gold edging so bright, so reflective - you could use the book edge as a shaving mirror. It is one of the heaviest books I own (well, pre-Arno Schmidt, anyway). My normally pliant cat wouldn't even let me take my obligatory "Kitten Squisher" photo without pushing back against its uncomfortable weight.
Most English reading humans with a high-school diploma have probably come across Poe's most famous works ("The Raven", Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado) - it had been years since I'd read those and a few others; returning to them after a long interlude presented some new perspectives on the works. But the ten or so famous pieces are just the scratched surface on the world of Poe. Here's a few things that I learned:
1) His only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was much, much better than I expected. It is a ripping-yarn-at-sea; a page turner with a tremendous conclusion.
2) I knew that Poe was an alcoholic - what I didn't know was how prevalent dipsomania pervades his work. I didn't keep track, but it seemed that most of his short fiction had a bottle (or three) of spirits consumed. It would be interesting to learn from a Poe scholar how his personal battle against the bottle paralleled his works...
3) A hidden gem of a story that I had never before read The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion quickly became my favorite work of Poe. Brilliant and sadly neglected / forgotten.
4) I had no idea that Poe is credited as being the author of the first detective "novel". The Purloined Letter is a well known story where the reader is first introduced to C. Auguste Dupin. What I didn't know was that Poe penned two other stories containing Dupin and his friend/narrator of the stories M. Le Bon. The other two stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, combined with the Purloined Letter could make a novella in themselves. Dupin is seen as paving the way for Holmes and Poirot.
5) Poe loved balloons. Hot air balloons. Loads of stories with hot air balloons. Including a trip to the moon in a hot air balloon.
6) Poe wrote a book review of Washington Irving's Astoria that was so exhaustive that I felt like I actually read the entire novel. Not so much a review as a comprehensive, blow-by-blow book report.
I wasn't a huge fan of Poe's poetry {insert POEtry joke here}, but I know so little about poetry, so my opinion doesn't mean much here. There was one very lengthy essay that he penned on the creation of poetry that I found so dull that I will admit to skimming. But out of 1,260+ pages I'm allowed just once, aren't I?
I tackled this volume of work as a preamble to reading Arno Schmidt's Bottom's Dream in 2017. I have two other books that need finishing before I embark on that voyage; Poe's works built the ship that I'll sail into those waters. When I finished this monster my wife asked, "What person reads a 1,200 page book as preparation to read a 1,700 page book?" She doesn't know all you wonderful people....
If you've spent any amount of time with Poe you'll agree with me that he composes sentences with such a solid structure that if you were to diagram one of them with pointy sticks instead of pencil lines you could create an impregnable breastworks. Somehow I feel that if Americans spoke the way that Poe's characters do that we would have meaningful discourse rather than blathery tweets. But I digress, let's take a stroll through Poe, shall we?
First I want to talk about this absolutely gorgeous volume I picked up from Barnes & Noble sometime in the mid '90s. Take a look at this beauty: engraved cover, heavy acid free paper and gold edging so bright, so reflective - you could use the book edge as a shaving mirror. It is one of the heaviest books I own (well, pre-Arno Schmidt, anyway). My normally pliant cat wouldn't even let me take my obligatory "Kitten Squisher" photo without pushing back against its uncomfortable weight.
Most English reading humans with a high-school diploma have probably come across Poe's most famous works ("The Raven", Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado) - it had been years since I'd read those and a few others; returning to them after a long interlude presented some new perspectives on the works. But the ten or so famous pieces are just the scratched surface on the world of Poe. Here's a few things that I learned:
1) His only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was much, much better than I expected. It is a ripping-yarn-at-sea; a page turner with a tremendous conclusion.
2) I knew that Poe was an alcoholic - what I didn't know was how prevalent dipsomania pervades his work. I didn't keep track, but it seemed that most of his short fiction had a bottle (or three) of spirits consumed. It would be interesting to learn from a Poe scholar how his personal battle against the bottle paralleled his works...
3) A hidden gem of a story that I had never before read The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion quickly became my favorite work of Poe. Brilliant and sadly neglected / forgotten.
4) I had no idea that Poe is credited as being the author of the first detective "novel". The Purloined Letter is a well known story where the reader is first introduced to C. Auguste Dupin. What I didn't know was that Poe penned two other stories containing Dupin and his friend/narrator of the stories M. Le Bon. The other two stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, combined with the Purloined Letter could make a novella in themselves. Dupin is seen as paving the way for Holmes and Poirot.
5) Poe loved balloons. Hot air balloons. Loads of stories with hot air balloons. Including a trip to the moon in a hot air balloon.
6) Poe wrote a book review of Washington Irving's Astoria that was so exhaustive that I felt like I actually read the entire novel. Not so much a review as a comprehensive, blow-by-blow book report.
I wasn't a huge fan of Poe's poetry {insert POEtry joke here}, but I know so little about poetry, so my opinion doesn't mean much here. There was one very lengthy essay that he penned on the creation of poetry that I found so dull that I will admit to skimming. But out of 1,260+ pages I'm allowed just once, aren't I?
I tackled this volume of work as a preamble to reading Arno Schmidt's Bottom's Dream in 2017. I have two other books that need finishing before I embark on that voyage; Poe's works built the ship that I'll sail into those waters. When I finished this monster my wife asked, "What person reads a 1,200 page book as preparation to read a 1,700 page book?" She doesn't know all you wonderful people....
May 2, 2021
I really enjoyed these creepy, gothic, and thrilling short stories. Edgar Allan Poe really was original and ahead of his time in writing. The storytelling and his ability to paint a picture with words is fantastic. These stories are tales of tragedy, woe, despair, and typically do not end well. All the stories are creative and enjoyable. Some that stood out to me were the:
'The Masque of the Red Death' were time and death are inevitable for all
The Gothic masterpiece of with a supernatural-horror feel, 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
There are many other short stories including a treasure hunting story along costal South Carolina (The Gold Bug), detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Roget), and a selection of poems including the supernatural classic, 'The Raven'.
Overall I really almost all of these short stories and poems. I would definitely recommend this or any other edition of 'The Complete Tales and Poems'. Thanks!
'The Masque of the Red Death' were time and death are inevitable for all
The Gothic masterpiece of with a supernatural-horror feel, 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
There are many other short stories including a treasure hunting story along costal South Carolina (The Gold Bug), detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Roget), and a selection of poems including the supernatural classic, 'The Raven'.
Overall I really almost all of these short stories and poems. I would definitely recommend this or any other edition of 'The Complete Tales and Poems'. Thanks!
January 30, 2024
For the better part of two years I read every single story, poem, and essay written by Poe that is included in this volume, which is to say: just about everything he wrote except for his grocery lists. That's over 1,000 pages of fairly small type, tightly packed with not a lot of white space on any page. It's a lot of Poe.
It was a revelation. I had no idea how many genres Poe dipped his toe into, or maybe started altogether. There are of course the suspense tales for which he is best known, tales of psychological terror in which people often find themselves buried alive. But there are also stories of Science Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction, Treasure Hunting, Nautical Adventure, Gothic Horror, Prose Poems, and a whole lot of satirical stories which may not even make sense to a modern reader unless you do a little online research for context. You can see the dotted lines connecting Poe to many other authors, including Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle, and through them to hundreds or thousands of other authors. The breadth and range of Poe's subject matter is literally breathtaking.
So why the three-star rating? Well, not every story is a gem. Many of the satirical stories especially are just not very relevant to a modern audience, no matter how much contextual research one undertakes. Poe's prose can seem fairly ornate to a modern reader and although some stories overcome or are enhanced by his wordiness, others drown in it. Also, Poe was extremely intelligent, and he seemed to enjoy rubbing that in people's faces, which can also be off-putting.
So the complete works of Poe is probably best suited for those who really want to study him as a writer. This book is not organized chronologically, which is a shame since that might be the best way to survey his works to observe his development as a writer. As for casual readers, a sampling of his "greatest hits" might be more suitable.
Anyway, below is a list of the stories included in this volume, along with a rating for each and brief thoughts about some of the inclusions.
The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall - 3/5 - science fiction story that inspired From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne
The Gold-Bug - 3/5 - won $100 grand prize in a writing contest and helped popularize cryptograms
The Balloon Hoax - 1/5 - inspired by the "Great Moon Hoax," this story was originally published as a true account
Von Kempelen and His Discovery - 3/5
Mesmeric Revelation - 2/5
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - 2/5 - mesmeric hoax that may be most familiar as one of the stories in Roger Corman's Tales of Terror film
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade - 3/5 - "sequel" to Arabian Nights
MS Found in a Bottle - 3/5
A Descent into the Maelstrom - 3/5
The Murders in the Rue Morgue - 3/5 - often considered the first detective story
The Mystery of Marie Roget - 2/5 - the second of the Dupin mysteries, this one based on the NY Cigar Girl case of Mary Rogers
The Purloined Letter - 3/5
The Black Cat - 4/5
The Fall of the House of Usher - 3/5
The Pit and the Pendulum - 3/5
The Premature Burial - 3/5 - no need to guess what this one is about
The Masque of the Red Death - 3/5
The Cask of Amontillado - 3/5
The Imp of the Perverse - 3/5
The Island of the Fay - 3/5
The Oval Portrait - 3/5 - very short; somewhat inspired Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray
The Assignation - 3/5
The Tell-Tale Heart - 4/5
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether - 3/5 - predictable tale of inmates taking over an asylum; the basis for the film Stonehearst Asylum
The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. - 3/5 - appears to be a mean-spirited attack on the literati of the time
How to Write a Blackwood Article - 3/5 - see below
A Predicament - 3/5 - often paired with the story above, as it was during publication, these two stories lampoon the Gothic sensation stories as well as their authors and publications
Mystification - 3/5 - story ridiculing duels
X-ing a Paragrab - 3/5
Diddling - 3/5
The Angel of the Odd - 3/5
Mellonta Tauta - 3/5 - dystopian future set 1000 years in Poe's future
Loss of Breath - 3/5
The Man that Was Used Up - 2/5
The Business Man - 2/5
Maelzel's Chess-Player - 3/5 - inductive reasoning about how a chess machine swindle was carried out
The Power of Words - 2/5
The Colloquy of Monos and Una - 3/5
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion - 2/5 - this story and the two that follow are all prose poems that are supposedly the debates between heavenly creatures
Shadow-A Parable - 2/5
Silence-A Fable - 2/5
Philosophy of Furniture - 2/5 - if you think there are no variations in Poe's writings, you are very wrong; a prime example is this piece on decorating (I am not making this up)
A Tale of Jerusalem - 2/5 - supposedly this is a witty satire of a popular 1828 novel of the same name by Horace Smith; the sentences in the source book were rearranged for this story, which to a modern reader just seems mildly anti-Semitic
The Sphinx - 3/5 - all a matter of perspective
The Man of the Crowd - 3/5
Never Bet the Devil Your Head - 3/5 - Poe's attack on transcendentalists wrapped up in a Faustianesque tale
"Thou Art the Man" - 3/5
Hop-Frog - 4/5 - what's with the obsession with orangutans?
Four Beasts in One, the Homo-Camelopard - 3/5 - absurdity
Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling - 3/5 - silliness
Bon-Bon - 3/5 - another "make a deal with the Devil" story
Some Words with a Mummy - 3/5 - useful things you can do with electricity
Review of Stephens' "Arabia Petraea" - 3/5 - book review of Middle-East travelogue focusing on the prophecy of desolation of Idumea
Magazine-Writing - Peter Snook - 3/5 - review of magazine story
The Quacks of Helicon-A Satire - 2/5 - review of satiric poem
Astoria - 3/5 - a very long review and summation of Washington Irving's non-fiction book Astoria: Or, Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains-Original Edition
The Domain of Arnheim. or The Landscape Garden - 2/5 - Poe's fascination with landscape architecture
Landor's Cottage - 2/5 -Poe's last story, like The Domain of Arnheim a fascination with landscape architecture
William Wilson - 3/5 - doppleganger
Berenice - 4/5 - say "cheese!"
Eleonora - 4/5
Ligeia - 3/5 - wife dies but comes back in the body of another
Morella - 3/5 - the wife who won't go away
Metzengerstein - 3/5 - very early Poe story in the Gothic tradition, inspired Kipling to write "The Phantom Rickshaw"
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains - 3/5 - a weird tale about a man who appears to experience a prior life
The Spectacles - 3/5 - love that isn't all it seems to be
The Duc De L'Omelette - 1/5 - parody of works of Nathaniel Parker Willis, published anonymously, Poe's first prose work to appear in print
The Oblong Box - 3/5 - what's in the box?
King Pest - 3/5 - satirical grotesque tale
Three Sundays in a Week - 3/5 - the things you had to do to get married in the 19th Century...
The Devil in the Belfry - 3/5 - parable about introducing chaos into an ordered system
Lionizing - 2/5 - supposedly one of Poe's funnier stories
...Poe's only novel:
Narrative of A. Gordon Pym - 3/5 - Poe would later refer to his only full-length novel as "a very silly book." Modeled after popular sea-voyage exploits - fictional and non - of the time, Poe spins a wild adventure tale that encompasses several unlikely episodes in the young life of his fictional narrator, Pym. From a literary standpoint, Narrative is most notable for having influenced Verne, Melville, Doyle and Lovecraft, whose own At the Mountains of Madness could almost be a sequel to this novel. Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
...these essays:
The Poetic Principle - 3/5 - posthumously-published essay based on a lecture Poe gave arguing that poetry should be created for aesthetic reasons alone
The Rationale of Verse - 2/5 - one needs a STRONG interest in poetry to enjoy this
...and these poems:
The Raven - 5/5
Lenore - 4/5
Hymn - 3/5
A Valentine - 3/5 - the name of the subject of the poem is encoded within
The Coliseum - 3/5
To Helen - 3/5
To __ - 3/5
Ulalume - 4/5 - origin of the phrase "a night in the lonesome October"
The Bells - 4/5
An Enigma - 3/5
Annabel Lee - 4/5
To My Mother - 3/5
The Haunted Palace - 3/5
The Conqueror Worm - 3/5
To F--S S. O--D - 3/5
To One in Paradise - 3/5
The Valley of Unrest - 3/5
The City in the Sea - 3/5
The Sleeper - 3/5
Silence - 3/5
A Dream Within a Dream - 3/5
Dream-Land - 3/5
To Zante - 3/5
Eulalie - 3/5
Eldorado - 3/5
Israbel - 3/5
For Annie - 3/5
To __ - 3/5
Bridal Ballad - 3/5
To F-- - 3/5
And there's an unfinished play...
Scenes From "Politian" - 2/5 - fortunately Poe decided to give up plays and focus on short stories
...and finally these poems written in his youth:
Sonnet-To Science - 2/5
Al Aaraaf - 2/5
To the River - 2/5
Tamerlane - 3/5
To __ - 3/5
A Dream - 3/5
Romance - 2/5
Fairy-Land - 3/5
The Lake-To __ - 3/5
Song - 3/5
To M. L. S. - 2/5
Spirits of the Dead - 3/5
To Helen - 2/5
Evening Star - 3/5
"The Happiest Day" - 2/5
Imitation - 3/5
Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius. Translation from the Greek - 3/5
Dreams - 3/5
"In Youth I Have Known One" - 3/5
A Paean - 3/5
To Isadore - 4/5
Alone - 4/5
It was a revelation. I had no idea how many genres Poe dipped his toe into, or maybe started altogether. There are of course the suspense tales for which he is best known, tales of psychological terror in which people often find themselves buried alive. But there are also stories of Science Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction, Treasure Hunting, Nautical Adventure, Gothic Horror, Prose Poems, and a whole lot of satirical stories which may not even make sense to a modern reader unless you do a little online research for context. You can see the dotted lines connecting Poe to many other authors, including Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle, and through them to hundreds or thousands of other authors. The breadth and range of Poe's subject matter is literally breathtaking.
So why the three-star rating? Well, not every story is a gem. Many of the satirical stories especially are just not very relevant to a modern audience, no matter how much contextual research one undertakes. Poe's prose can seem fairly ornate to a modern reader and although some stories overcome or are enhanced by his wordiness, others drown in it. Also, Poe was extremely intelligent, and he seemed to enjoy rubbing that in people's faces, which can also be off-putting.
So the complete works of Poe is probably best suited for those who really want to study him as a writer. This book is not organized chronologically, which is a shame since that might be the best way to survey his works to observe his development as a writer. As for casual readers, a sampling of his "greatest hits" might be more suitable.
Anyway, below is a list of the stories included in this volume, along with a rating for each and brief thoughts about some of the inclusions.
The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall - 3/5 - science fiction story that inspired From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne
The Gold-Bug - 3/5 - won $100 grand prize in a writing contest and helped popularize cryptograms
The Balloon Hoax - 1/5 - inspired by the "Great Moon Hoax," this story was originally published as a true account
Von Kempelen and His Discovery - 3/5
Mesmeric Revelation - 2/5
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - 2/5 - mesmeric hoax that may be most familiar as one of the stories in Roger Corman's Tales of Terror film
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade - 3/5 - "sequel" to Arabian Nights
MS Found in a Bottle - 3/5
A Descent into the Maelstrom - 3/5
The Murders in the Rue Morgue - 3/5 - often considered the first detective story
The Mystery of Marie Roget - 2/5 - the second of the Dupin mysteries, this one based on the NY Cigar Girl case of Mary Rogers
The Purloined Letter - 3/5
The Black Cat - 4/5
The Fall of the House of Usher - 3/5
The Pit and the Pendulum - 3/5
The Premature Burial - 3/5 - no need to guess what this one is about
The Masque of the Red Death - 3/5
The Cask of Amontillado - 3/5
The Imp of the Perverse - 3/5
The Island of the Fay - 3/5
The Oval Portrait - 3/5 - very short; somewhat inspired Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray
The Assignation - 3/5
The Tell-Tale Heart - 4/5
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether - 3/5 - predictable tale of inmates taking over an asylum; the basis for the film Stonehearst Asylum
The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. - 3/5 - appears to be a mean-spirited attack on the literati of the time
How to Write a Blackwood Article - 3/5 - see below
A Predicament - 3/5 - often paired with the story above, as it was during publication, these two stories lampoon the Gothic sensation stories as well as their authors and publications
Mystification - 3/5 - story ridiculing duels
X-ing a Paragrab - 3/5
Diddling - 3/5
The Angel of the Odd - 3/5
Mellonta Tauta - 3/5 - dystopian future set 1000 years in Poe's future
Loss of Breath - 3/5
The Man that Was Used Up - 2/5
The Business Man - 2/5
Maelzel's Chess-Player - 3/5 - inductive reasoning about how a chess machine swindle was carried out
The Power of Words - 2/5
The Colloquy of Monos and Una - 3/5
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion - 2/5 - this story and the two that follow are all prose poems that are supposedly the debates between heavenly creatures
Shadow-A Parable - 2/5
Silence-A Fable - 2/5
Philosophy of Furniture - 2/5 - if you think there are no variations in Poe's writings, you are very wrong; a prime example is this piece on decorating (I am not making this up)
A Tale of Jerusalem - 2/5 - supposedly this is a witty satire of a popular 1828 novel of the same name by Horace Smith; the sentences in the source book were rearranged for this story, which to a modern reader just seems mildly anti-Semitic
The Sphinx - 3/5 - all a matter of perspective
The Man of the Crowd - 3/5
Never Bet the Devil Your Head - 3/5 - Poe's attack on transcendentalists wrapped up in a Faustianesque tale
"Thou Art the Man" - 3/5
Hop-Frog - 4/5 - what's with the obsession with orangutans?
Four Beasts in One, the Homo-Camelopard - 3/5 - absurdity
Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling - 3/5 - silliness
Bon-Bon - 3/5 - another "make a deal with the Devil" story
Some Words with a Mummy - 3/5 - useful things you can do with electricity
Review of Stephens' "Arabia Petraea" - 3/5 - book review of Middle-East travelogue focusing on the prophecy of desolation of Idumea
Magazine-Writing - Peter Snook - 3/5 - review of magazine story
The Quacks of Helicon-A Satire - 2/5 - review of satiric poem
Astoria - 3/5 - a very long review and summation of Washington Irving's non-fiction book Astoria: Or, Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains-Original Edition
The Domain of Arnheim. or The Landscape Garden - 2/5 - Poe's fascination with landscape architecture
Landor's Cottage - 2/5 -Poe's last story, like The Domain of Arnheim a fascination with landscape architecture
William Wilson - 3/5 - doppleganger
Berenice - 4/5 - say "cheese!"
Eleonora - 4/5
Ligeia - 3/5 - wife dies but comes back in the body of another
Morella - 3/5 - the wife who won't go away
Metzengerstein - 3/5 - very early Poe story in the Gothic tradition, inspired Kipling to write "The Phantom Rickshaw"
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains - 3/5 - a weird tale about a man who appears to experience a prior life
The Spectacles - 3/5 - love that isn't all it seems to be
The Duc De L'Omelette - 1/5 - parody of works of Nathaniel Parker Willis, published anonymously, Poe's first prose work to appear in print
The Oblong Box - 3/5 - what's in the box?
King Pest - 3/5 - satirical grotesque tale
Three Sundays in a Week - 3/5 - the things you had to do to get married in the 19th Century...
The Devil in the Belfry - 3/5 - parable about introducing chaos into an ordered system
Lionizing - 2/5 - supposedly one of Poe's funnier stories
...Poe's only novel:
Narrative of A. Gordon Pym - 3/5 - Poe would later refer to his only full-length novel as "a very silly book." Modeled after popular sea-voyage exploits - fictional and non - of the time, Poe spins a wild adventure tale that encompasses several unlikely episodes in the young life of his fictional narrator, Pym. From a literary standpoint, Narrative is most notable for having influenced Verne, Melville, Doyle and Lovecraft, whose own At the Mountains of Madness could almost be a sequel to this novel. Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
...these essays:
The Poetic Principle - 3/5 - posthumously-published essay based on a lecture Poe gave arguing that poetry should be created for aesthetic reasons alone
The Rationale of Verse - 2/5 - one needs a STRONG interest in poetry to enjoy this
...and these poems:
The Raven - 5/5
Lenore - 4/5
Hymn - 3/5
A Valentine - 3/5 - the name of the subject of the poem is encoded within
The Coliseum - 3/5
To Helen - 3/5
To __ - 3/5
Ulalume - 4/5 - origin of the phrase "a night in the lonesome October"
The Bells - 4/5
An Enigma - 3/5
Annabel Lee - 4/5
To My Mother - 3/5
The Haunted Palace - 3/5
The Conqueror Worm - 3/5
To F--S S. O--D - 3/5
To One in Paradise - 3/5
The Valley of Unrest - 3/5
The City in the Sea - 3/5
The Sleeper - 3/5
Silence - 3/5
A Dream Within a Dream - 3/5
Dream-Land - 3/5
To Zante - 3/5
Eulalie - 3/5
Eldorado - 3/5
Israbel - 3/5
For Annie - 3/5
To __ - 3/5
Bridal Ballad - 3/5
To F-- - 3/5
And there's an unfinished play...
Scenes From "Politian" - 2/5 - fortunately Poe decided to give up plays and focus on short stories
...and finally these poems written in his youth:
Sonnet-To Science - 2/5
Al Aaraaf - 2/5
To the River - 2/5
Tamerlane - 3/5
To __ - 3/5
A Dream - 3/5
Romance - 2/5
Fairy-Land - 3/5
The Lake-To __ - 3/5
Song - 3/5
To M. L. S. - 2/5
Spirits of the Dead - 3/5
To Helen - 2/5
Evening Star - 3/5
"The Happiest Day" - 2/5
Imitation - 3/5
Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius. Translation from the Greek - 3/5
Dreams - 3/5
"In Youth I Have Known One" - 3/5
A Paean - 3/5
To Isadore - 4/5
Alone - 4/5
July 1, 2017
I've reviewed the tales I read by their individual titles, and I won't repeat my reviews here. Let me just say that Poe is an under-appreciated master. Not just under-appreciated by many readers today, for whom he's synonymous with being a sort of proto-schlock-horror writer, but under-appreciated by readers and even famous writers of his day. Henry James infamously said that "[a]n enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection." Granted, James was young at the time, but still, that's no excuse. Even worse was Ralph Waldo Emerson's dismissal of Poe as the "jingle man." These writers (whom I otherwise admire) thought of Poe as immature, but I think they make the classic mistake of confusing the writer with his subject. Poe's characters are often high-strung and immature in their way, but Poe is never without an ironic distance from them. Many of the narrators of his tales are classic "unreliable narrators," and Poe wants his readers to see them as such--to see behind the masks they don--and it's there that his tales gather most force.
Shelved as 'long-term-currently-reading'
August 14, 2016Reading "The Complete Stories and Poems" will be a hell of a time-consuming project, but as I can feel honored to call Edgar Allan Poe one of my favorite authors, the only option to give his writing abilities justice is to read his stories and poems in their entirety. My intention is to update this review with my thoughts on all the stories and poems Poe has ever written constantly until I've completed my way through (however, I'll probably not always add it to my update feed in order to not spam other feeds), but it will be sporadic and infrequent due to my unpredictable reading moods.
Tales (listed in chronological order)
Metzengerstein: (4/5 stars)
Being the first short story Poe has ever published, Metzengerstein includes all the well-known aspects of his writing style which he has become so popular for. Quite disturbing, relying on speculative thoughts due to the narrative, a thought-provoking turning point and a deeper meaning which appears when thinking more precisely about the story. Poe has excellently explored the interesting concept of metempsychosis through this interesting short story which focuses on the feuds of two rivaling Hungarian families. [Please don't read the synopsis on the Goodreads book edition, since it spoils the story and its apparent meaning in their entirety.]
The Duc de L'Omelette: (1/5 stars)
Somehow, I find myself being glad that Edgar Allan Poe also came up with terribly-written stories like this one, so that I can still find reasons to criticize him. The fact that this was written partly in English, partly in French, was not so irritating as was the lack of anything resembling a plot.
A Tale of Jerusalem: (1/5 stars)
It's interesting to see how pointless some of Poe's early stories were. Trying to read them chronologically enables the reader to look behind Poe's writing process, and it definitely accentuates how much he improved his writing skills in the course of time.
Morella: (4/5 stars)
Morella is one of Poe's most memorable stories so far. A short tale of love, studies, death, identity and dread, Poe managed to integrate me into the story and fix my attention on his words, only to leave me shattered and thunderstruck upon the final twist.
Four Beasts in One - The Homo-Cameleopard: (1/5 stars)
I have no idea what to think of Four Beasts In One: The Homo-Cameleopard. It was boring, ridiculous and did not even include a message of its own. A story which can definitely be skipped without regretting it.
Ligeia: (4,5/5 stars)
One of my favorite Poe stories. In Ligeia, it appears as though Poe wants his reader to know that not only does he masterfully write chilling horror stories, but also is he a romantic at heart. Combining elements of romance and horror, Poe wove a suspenseful story focusing on the mental health of a protagonist who has lost the love of his life.
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher is a story I don't remember a lot of, so I'll definitely re-read it soon.
A Descent into the Maelstrom (3/5 stars)
With the creepy title and the horrifying premise - the narrator talking about a fishing trip with his two brothers which ended in chaos and turmoil years ago - I expected this story to be a little more frightening and engaging than it ultimately ended up to be. You will find Poe's classic style, though nothing extraordinary.
The Oval Portrait (3,5/5 stars)
One of the shortest stories of Poe's writing, The Oval Portrait focuses on a protagonist who finds a certain painting of a beautiful woman in an abandoned castle and discovers the frightening as well as disturbing background of this painting. Precise and meaningful, Poe's prose masterfully explores the sacrifices of art.
The Masque of the Red Death (4/5 stars)
The Masque of the Red Death is no story about plot or characters. It's a story about atmosphere, about mood, about the symbolisms of colorful descriptions. That's what Poe was able to write perfectly, and that's what I can recommend this story for.
The Tell-Tale Heart: (5/5 stars)
The Tell-Tale Heart was the story through which I have had the pleasure to meet Edgar Allan Poe some years ago, and it proved to become one of the best short stories I've ever read. Basically, it's a murderer's confession, creating the impression of a mad narrator and raising the reader's interest in his arguments he builds up as part of his defense. As the story continues, Poe cleverly turns his reader from a witness of the events into a judge of guilt and innocence, a narrative structure admired by me.
The Black Cat: (4/5 stars)
The Black Cat represents an exceptionally well-written, shocking and frightening story dealing with madness and human abysses. Being the most terrifying story I've read so far from Poe, this one can be highly recommended to be read.
The Sphinx: (3/5 stars)
One of his shortest works, "The Sphinx" deals with the cholera epidemic and its influence. Not too disturbing or compelling, but definitely worth a glimpse.
The Cask of Amontillado: (3,5/5 stars)
The Cask of Amontillado, the first story I've read as part of my intention to read all of Poe's works, deals with a man's creepy revenge upon an earlier friend who seemingly infuriated the narrator, motivating him to perform his fatal scheme of revenge. This one is not so much about the characters, but more about the atmosphere and the climax itself. Poe focuses on what happens down there in the catacombs, not establishing why it happens. The message: Do never, never, never be so naive to enter some dark, creepy catacombs on another person's request without any witnesses. It might not end too well for your health.
Poems (listed in chronological order)
The Raven: (5/5 stars)
Do I need to add anything else to this quote?
Annabel Lee: (4/5 stars)
As short as Poe's poems are, he always succeeds with breathing life into his words.
[Updated: 02/19/16]
Tales (listed in chronological order)
Metzengerstein: (4/5 stars)
Being the first short story Poe has ever published, Metzengerstein includes all the well-known aspects of his writing style which he has become so popular for. Quite disturbing, relying on speculative thoughts due to the narrative, a thought-provoking turning point and a deeper meaning which appears when thinking more precisely about the story. Poe has excellently explored the interesting concept of metempsychosis through this interesting short story which focuses on the feuds of two rivaling Hungarian families. [Please don't read the synopsis on the Goodreads book edition, since it spoils the story and its apparent meaning in their entirety.]
The Duc de L'Omelette: (1/5 stars)
Somehow, I find myself being glad that Edgar Allan Poe also came up with terribly-written stories like this one, so that I can still find reasons to criticize him. The fact that this was written partly in English, partly in French, was not so irritating as was the lack of anything resembling a plot.
A Tale of Jerusalem: (1/5 stars)
It's interesting to see how pointless some of Poe's early stories were. Trying to read them chronologically enables the reader to look behind Poe's writing process, and it definitely accentuates how much he improved his writing skills in the course of time.
Morella: (4/5 stars)
Morella is one of Poe's most memorable stories so far. A short tale of love, studies, death, identity and dread, Poe managed to integrate me into the story and fix my attention on his words, only to leave me shattered and thunderstruck upon the final twist.
Four Beasts in One - The Homo-Cameleopard: (1/5 stars)
I have no idea what to think of Four Beasts In One: The Homo-Cameleopard. It was boring, ridiculous and did not even include a message of its own. A story which can definitely be skipped without regretting it.
Ligeia: (4,5/5 stars)
One of my favorite Poe stories. In Ligeia, it appears as though Poe wants his reader to know that not only does he masterfully write chilling horror stories, but also is he a romantic at heart. Combining elements of romance and horror, Poe wove a suspenseful story focusing on the mental health of a protagonist who has lost the love of his life.
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher is a story I don't remember a lot of, so I'll definitely re-read it soon.
A Descent into the Maelstrom (3/5 stars)
With the creepy title and the horrifying premise - the narrator talking about a fishing trip with his two brothers which ended in chaos and turmoil years ago - I expected this story to be a little more frightening and engaging than it ultimately ended up to be. You will find Poe's classic style, though nothing extraordinary.
The Oval Portrait (3,5/5 stars)
One of the shortest stories of Poe's writing, The Oval Portrait focuses on a protagonist who finds a certain painting of a beautiful woman in an abandoned castle and discovers the frightening as well as disturbing background of this painting. Precise and meaningful, Poe's prose masterfully explores the sacrifices of art.
The Masque of the Red Death (4/5 stars)
The Masque of the Red Death is no story about plot or characters. It's a story about atmosphere, about mood, about the symbolisms of colorful descriptions. That's what Poe was able to write perfectly, and that's what I can recommend this story for.
The Tell-Tale Heart: (5/5 stars)
The Tell-Tale Heart was the story through which I have had the pleasure to meet Edgar Allan Poe some years ago, and it proved to become one of the best short stories I've ever read. Basically, it's a murderer's confession, creating the impression of a mad narrator and raising the reader's interest in his arguments he builds up as part of his defense. As the story continues, Poe cleverly turns his reader from a witness of the events into a judge of guilt and innocence, a narrative structure admired by me.
The Black Cat: (4/5 stars)
The Black Cat represents an exceptionally well-written, shocking and frightening story dealing with madness and human abysses. Being the most terrifying story I've read so far from Poe, this one can be highly recommended to be read.
The Sphinx: (3/5 stars)
One of his shortest works, "The Sphinx" deals with the cholera epidemic and its influence. Not too disturbing or compelling, but definitely worth a glimpse.
The Cask of Amontillado: (3,5/5 stars)
The Cask of Amontillado, the first story I've read as part of my intention to read all of Poe's works, deals with a man's creepy revenge upon an earlier friend who seemingly infuriated the narrator, motivating him to perform his fatal scheme of revenge. This one is not so much about the characters, but more about the atmosphere and the climax itself. Poe focuses on what happens down there in the catacombs, not establishing why it happens. The message: Do never, never, never be so naive to enter some dark, creepy catacombs on another person's request without any witnesses. It might not end too well for your health.
Poems (listed in chronological order)
The Raven: (5/5 stars)
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more."
Do I need to add anything else to this quote?
Annabel Lee: (4/5 stars)
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
As short as Poe's poems are, he always succeeds with breathing life into his words.
[Updated: 02/19/16]
June 20, 2017
Exercises in Genre and Style
I was never exposed to Poe in my schooldays, but I later became aware of his reputation.
I didn’t know anything about his writing, except that I expected it to be a kind of guilty pleasure.
Apparently, I decided to address my ignorance in 1983, when I bought a second hand hardback copy of his complete tales for a bargain price of $1. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the step of reading it until now, when I chose it as one of three books that I planned to read on an overseas family holiday. As it turned out, I neither finished it nor started either of the other two books, and I read the last remaining stories on our return.
I was aware that Poe specialised in mystery stories and that he had more or less invented the genre of detective fiction. What I didn’t know was that he also wrote relatively self-consciously in a metafictional sense. Not only did he invent a manner of writing, but he explained fairly insightfully what he was trying to accomplish, so that others could follow in his footsteps.
Poe’s metafictional approach reminded me a lot of the early stories of Borges.
Verisimilitude: Veracity or Hoax?
The first story in this collection is “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall”, which is more like a piece of science fiction (about a trip to the moon).
It’s not quite clear to the characters whether the trip actually occurred. Thus, the purpose of the tale is to make us believe that it actually did. Poe’s task is therefore to convince us of its veracity. He does this stylistically by containing enough empirical and scientific evidence to persuade us that this level of detail could only be known if the narrator had actually experienced what he purported to have. Poe achieves “plausibility by scientific detail”. Ironically, in an endnote, Poe differentiates his tale from earlier hoaxes (one of which adopts the tone of banter, the other being downright earnest). What differentiates his tale is that it is “an attempt at verisimilitude”.
While he doesn’t say as much, it can be inferred that, if you can convince a reader that something is the truth, you are equally capable of perpetrating a hoax. This reminded me of the later quotation often attributed to Oscar Wilde:
“The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
The Discovery of the Concealed
“The Gold-Bug” concerns the hunt for a buried treasure, the secret location of which is revealed in a coded map. What is concealed can be discovered, if the code is deciphered and the enigma solved. A logic is required to both encipher and decipher the message. The narrator comments:
“All this is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit.”
The Minutest Particularity
In “The Balloon-Hoax”, a hoax is achieved by describing a voyage in “the minutest particulars”. Once again, credibility and credulity are both achieved by particularity and detail.
In contrast, in “Von Kempelen and His Discovery”, the narrator detects that a paragraph in a newspaper detailing an invention is “apocryphal, principally upon its manner. It does not look true.” Ironically, what allows the narrator to come to this conclusion is an excess of particularity, which is not customary.
Startling Facts and the Tendency towards Doubt and Disbelief
“Mesmeric Revelation” commences:
“Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession - an unprofitable and disreputable tribe.”
Given the tendency to doubt, the narrator calls into question the purpose of proof -
“There can be no more absolute waste of time than the attempt to prove, at the present day that man, by mere exercise of will, can so impress his fellow, as to cast him into an abnormal condition, of which the phenomena resemble very closely those of death…”
Similarly, in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”, “a garbled and exaggerated account [of a supposed crime] made its way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations; and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.”
The narrator addresses the “unwarranted popular feeling of” disbelief by trying to relate the facts, based on contemporaneous notes, “either condensed or copied verbatim”.
Vicarious Credulity
In “The Thousand-And-Second Tale”, Poe piggy-backs the credibility of “The Arabian Nights” to tell (Scheherazade) and doubt (the king) various tales (like those in “Gulliver’s Travels”) concerning the voyage of Sinbad around the globe on the back of a huge beast, including that of a petrified forest, and an underwater mountain “down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal���, all of which incredible stories concern natural phenomena that contemporary readers will know to exist. In less than 20 pages, Poe better achieves what John Barth would a century later devote an entire novel to.
In contrast, in “A Descent into the Maelstrom”, Poe describes the loss of a ship and most of its crew (the narrator survives) in the abyss created by “a great whirlpool of the Maelstrom” in words ostensibly borrowed from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, to which “my imagination most readily assented”.
“My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now...I told them my story - they did not believe it. I now tell it to you - and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.”
Inordinate Analysis and Ratiocination
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, a detective story (in which Poe introduces M.Auguste Dupin), focusses on the process of detection, in particular, the role of rational analysis:
“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.”
Ostensible Profundity
This is a good description of how Poe goes about writing his tales, in particular “The Gold-Bug”. But it also helps to understand the Post-Modernist preoccupation with maximalism, with size or length or quantity over subject or merit or quality. Poe himself adds:
“What is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound.”
In other words, bullshit (and lots of it) baffles brains. These purportedly encyclopaedic fictions “may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.”
Simple Ingenuity
Poe asserts that “the analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis...Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
On the other hand, Poe adds that “by undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.”
Suggestions and Sensations
“The Mystery of Marie Roget” concerns another death about two years later than those in the previous story. Despite the amount of factual evidence available to the press, it concerns itself primarily with “suggestions”:
“We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation - to make a point - than to further the cause of truth.”
Dupin puts the newspapers to the test and concludes that their assertions “now appear a tissue of inconsequence and incoherence”.
Collateral Irrelevancy
Poe also comments on judicial practice:
“It is the malpractice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. Yet experience has shown...that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth, arises from the seemingly irrelevant. It is through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely through its letter, that modern science has resolved to calculate upon the unforeseen...The history of human knowledge has so uninterruptibly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to base, upon what has been, a vision of what is to be. Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure.”
Thus, Poe questions the role of reason and logic, not just in the process of detection, but in the creation of literature.
Self-Evident Non-Concealment
Poe pursues the counter-intuitive in “The Purloined Letter”, the facts of which Dupin describes as “simple and odd”, as well as a mystery that is “a little too plain, a little too self-evident”.
The stolen letter has been concealed, but all logicał attempts to locate it have failed. Dupin comes to the conclusion that, “to conceal the letter, the Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.”
In other words, the letter had been hidden in plain sight.
Deathly Swoons and Slumbers
“The Black Cat” is a Gothic tale concerning an attempt to conceal a murder that comes undone, i.e., another example of a failed concealment.
The concealment tales are followed by a number of mistaken entombment tales, the first being “The Fall of the House of Usher”. In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, it is the narrator who is entombed during the Inquisition:
“In the deepest slumber - no! In delirium - no! In a swoon - no! In death - no! Even in the grave all is not lost. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream.”
The Bewilderment of the Visionary
Poe describes near-death experiences in terms of the visionary:
“He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.”
Darkness Evermore
Poe continues into the realm of horror in “The Premature Burial”. Again, the narrator recites numerous real-life examples of such events to add to the veracity of his tale, before admitting that this event actually happened to him:
“I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties - and yet it was dark - all dark - the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.”
Near-death is as close to death as we are able to experience and live to tell the tale.
The Confession of Guilt
In “The Cask of Amontillado”, the narrator entombs a friend without being detected. His friend rests in peace, even if the narrator doesn’t.
In “The Imp of the Perverse”, the narrator murders a friend, only to be plagued by the temptation to confess his crime. The spirit of the perverse condemns us to do what we should not, even if it threatens our own safety.
My Wife and My Dead Wife
In “The Oval Portrait”, the narrator recounts a story about a painter who fell in love with a painting of his own wife, who perishes from his subsequent neglect.
The narrator in “The Assignation” also loses something of value over the matter of a painting:
“Ill-fated and mysterious man! - bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee!”
Self-Denial and Confession
“The Tell-Tale Heart” is another story in which the drive to confess to a crime prevails.
In “The Domain of Arnheim”, Poe returns to the difference between reason and the imagination:
“In truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of vice appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus be circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation, can be apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the merits of denial - to the excellences which refrain. Beyond these, the critical art can but suggest.”
Cursed and Caught Out
“Berenice” is another tale in which the narrator finds that he has killed a friend (his cousin) and been found out (this time without needing to confess).
In “Eleonora”, memories of the narrator’s deceased love curse a subsequent relationship. “Ligeia” witnesses life after death, but still highlights the ephemerality of life and beauty, and the terrors of death. The narrator suffers doubly from his opium-induced dreams.
In contrast, the narrator of “Morella” longs for the death of his eponymous wife, who eventually dies while giving birth to a daughter with the same name and characteristics.
Convinced by (an) Imperfect Vision
In “Shadow - A Parable”, Poe recognises the incredibility of his tale (set in ancient Egypt) by anticipating that some readers will disbelieve it and some will doubt it instead.
“The Spectacles” comically cautions the reader against love at first sight, especially when you have less than perfect vision.
“The Oblong Box” plays with the format of a wife in a coffin.
“Three Sundays in a Week” returns to the linguistic tricks of “The Gold-Bug”.
“Thou Art the Man” is a humorous tale of how the deceased victim manages to confront his murderer with his guilt.
“Some Words with a Mummy” reprises “The Thousand-And-Second Tale”, only the mummy compares the current world unfavourably with his own world thousands of years before.
For all Poe’s Gothic Romanticism, horror and humour, his metafictional objectives make his tales that much more interesting, entertaining and relevant to our time.
January 26, 2017
I was never exposed to Poe in my schooldays, but I later became aware of his reputation.
I didn’t know anything about his writing, except that I expected it to be a kind of guilty pleasure.
Apparently, I decided to address my ignorance in 1983, when I bought a second hand hardback copy of his complete tales for a bargain price of $1. Unfortunately, I didn’t take the step of reading it until now, when I chose it as one of three books that I planned to read on an overseas family holiday. As it turned out, I neither finished it nor started either of the other two books, and I read the last remaining stories on our return.
I was aware that Poe specialised in mystery stories and that he had more or less invented the genre of detective fiction. What I didn’t know was that he also wrote relatively self-consciously in a metafictional sense. Not only did he invent a manner of writing, but he explained fairly insightfully what he was trying to accomplish, so that others could follow in his footsteps.
Poe’s metafictional approach reminded me a lot of the early stories of Borges.
Verisimilitude: Veracity or Hoax?
The first story in this collection is “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall”, which is more like a piece of science fiction (about a trip to the moon).
It’s not quite clear to the characters whether the trip actually occurred. Thus, the purpose of the tale is to make us believe that it actually did. Poe’s task is therefore to convince us of its veracity. He does this stylistically by containing enough empirical and scientific evidence to persuade us that this level of detail could only be known if the narrator had actually experienced what he purported to have. Poe achieves “plausibility by scientific detail”. Ironically, in an endnote, Poe differentiates his tale from earlier hoaxes (one of which adopts the tone of banter, the other being downright earnest). What differentiates his tale is that it is “an attempt at verisimilitude”.
While he doesn’t say as much, it can be inferred that, if you can convince a reader that something is the truth, you are equally capable of perpetrating a hoax. This reminded me of the later quotation often attributed to Oscar Wilde:
“The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
The Discovery of the Concealed
“The Gold-Bug” concerns the hunt for a buried treasure, the secret location of which is revealed in a coded map. What is concealed can be discovered, if the code is deciphered and the enigma solved. A logic is required to both encipher and decipher the message. The narrator comments:
“All this is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit.”
The Minutest Particularity
In “The Balloon-Hoax”, a hoax is achieved by describing a voyage in “the minutest particulars”. Once again, credibility and credulity are both achieved by particularity and detail.
In contrast, in “Von Kempelen and His Discovery”, the narrator detects that a paragraph in a newspaper detailing an invention is “apocryphal, principally upon its manner. It does not look true.” Ironically, what allows the narrator to come to this conclusion is an excess of particularity, which is not customary.
Startling Facts and the Tendency towards Doubt and Disbelief
“Mesmeric Revelation” commences:
“Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession - an unprofitable and disreputable tribe.”
Given the tendency to doubt, the narrator calls into question the purpose of proof -
“There can be no more absolute waste of time than the attempt to prove, at the present day that man, by mere exercise of will, can so impress his fellow, as to cast him into an abnormal condition, of which the phenomena resemble very closely those of death…”
Similarly, in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”, “a garbled and exaggerated account [of a supposed crime] made its way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations; and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.”
The narrator addresses the “unwarranted popular feeling of” disbelief by trying to relate the facts, based on contemporaneous notes, “either condensed or copied verbatim”.
Vicarious Credulity
In “The Thousand-And-Second Tale”, Poe piggy-backs the credibility of “The Arabian Nights” to tell (Scheherazade) and doubt (the king) various tales (like those in “Gulliver’s Travels”) concerning the voyage of Sinbad around the globe on the back of a huge beast, including that of a petrified forest, and an underwater mountain “down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal���, all of which incredible stories concern natural phenomena that contemporary readers will know to exist. In less than 20 pages, Poe better achieves what John Barth would a century later devote an entire novel to.
In contrast, in “A Descent into the Maelstrom”, Poe describes the loss of a ship and most of its crew (the narrator survives) in the abyss created by “a great whirlpool of the Maelstrom” in words ostensibly borrowed from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, to which “my imagination most readily assented”.
“My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now...I told them my story - they did not believe it. I now tell it to you - and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.”
Inordinate Analysis and Ratiocination
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, a detective story (in which Poe introduces M.Auguste Dupin), focusses on the process of detection, in particular, the role of rational analysis:
“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.”
Ostensible Profundity
This is a good description of how Poe goes about writing his tales, in particular “The Gold-Bug”. But it also helps to understand the Post-Modernist preoccupation with maximalism, with size or length or quantity over subject or merit or quality. Poe himself adds:
“What is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound.”
In other words, bullshit (and lots of it) baffles brains. These purportedly encyclopaedic fictions “may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.”
Simple Ingenuity
Poe asserts that “the analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis...Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
On the other hand, Poe adds that “by undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.”
Suggestions and Sensations
“The Mystery of Marie Roget” concerns another death about two years later than those in the previous story. Despite the amount of factual evidence available to the press, it concerns itself primarily with “suggestions”:
“We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation - to make a point - than to further the cause of truth.”
Dupin puts the newspapers to the test and concludes that their assertions “now appear a tissue of inconsequence and incoherence”.
Collateral Irrelevancy
Poe also comments on judicial practice:
“It is the malpractice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. Yet experience has shown...that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth, arises from the seemingly irrelevant. It is through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely through its letter, that modern science has resolved to calculate upon the unforeseen...The history of human knowledge has so uninterruptibly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to base, upon what has been, a vision of what is to be. Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure.”
Thus, Poe questions the role of reason and logic, not just in the process of detection, but in the creation of literature.
Self-Evident Non-Concealment
Poe pursues the counter-intuitive in “The Purloined Letter”, the facts of which Dupin describes as “simple and odd”, as well as a mystery that is “a little too plain, a little too self-evident”.
The stolen letter has been concealed, but all logicał attempts to locate it have failed. Dupin comes to the conclusion that, “to conceal the letter, the Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.”
In other words, the letter had been hidden in plain sight.
Deathly Swoons and Slumbers
“The Black Cat” is a Gothic tale concerning an attempt to conceal a murder that comes undone, i.e., another example of a failed concealment.
The concealment tales are followed by a number of mistaken entombment tales, the first being “The Fall of the House of Usher”. In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, it is the narrator who is entombed during the Inquisition:
“In the deepest slumber - no! In delirium - no! In a swoon - no! In death - no! Even in the grave all is not lost. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream.”
The Bewilderment of the Visionary
Poe describes near-death experiences in terms of the visionary:
“He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.”
Darkness Evermore
Poe continues into the realm of horror in “The Premature Burial”. Again, the narrator recites numerous real-life examples of such events to add to the veracity of his tale, before admitting that this event actually happened to him:
“I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties - and yet it was dark - all dark - the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.”
Near-death is as close to death as we are able to experience and live to tell the tale.
The Confession of Guilt
In “The Cask of Amontillado”, the narrator entombs a friend without being detected. His friend rests in peace, even if the narrator doesn’t.
In “The Imp of the Perverse”, the narrator murders a friend, only to be plagued by the temptation to confess his crime. The spirit of the perverse condemns us to do what we should not, even if it threatens our own safety.
My Wife and My Dead Wife
In “The Oval Portrait”, the narrator recounts a story about a painter who fell in love with a painting of his own wife, who perishes from his subsequent neglect.
The narrator in “The Assignation” also loses something of value over the matter of a painting:
“Ill-fated and mysterious man! - bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee!”
Self-Denial and Confession
“The Tell-Tale Heart” is another story in which the drive to confess to a crime prevails.
In “The Domain of Arnheim”, Poe returns to the difference between reason and the imagination:
“In truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of vice appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus be circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation, can be apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the merits of denial - to the excellences which refrain. Beyond these, the critical art can but suggest.”
Cursed and Caught Out
“Berenice” is another tale in which the narrator finds that he has killed a friend (his cousin) and been found out (this time without needing to confess).
In “Eleonora”, memories of the narrator’s deceased love curse a subsequent relationship. “Ligeia” witnesses life after death, but still highlights the ephemerality of life and beauty, and the terrors of death. The narrator suffers doubly from his opium-induced dreams.
In contrast, the narrator of “Morella” longs for the death of his eponymous wife, who eventually dies while giving birth to a daughter with the same name and characteristics.
Convinced by (an) Imperfect Vision
In “Shadow - A Parable”, Poe recognises the incredibility of his tale (set in ancient Egypt) by anticipating that some readers will disbelieve it and some will doubt it instead.
“The Spectacles” comically cautions the reader against love at first sight, especially when you have less than perfect vision.
“The Oblong Box” plays with the format of a wife in a coffin.
“Three Sundays in a Week” returns to the linguistic tricks of “The Gold-Bug”.
“Thou Art the Man” is a humorous tale of how the deceased victim manages to confront his murderer with his guilt.
“Some Words with a Mummy” reprises “The Thousand-And-Second Tale”, only the mummy compares the current world unfavourably with his own world thousands of years before.
For all Poe’s Gothic Romanticism, horror and humour, his metafictional objectives make his tales that much more interesting, entertaining and relevant to our time.
January 26, 2017
September 26, 2024
Next to Dickens, one of my favorite authors of all time. Nothing warms my heart more than a spooky atmosphere and a twisted mind. The King of Horror, in my opinion, and one of the greatest writers ever. His beautiful prose gets me every time. Each work reviewed separately below.
The Raven
The Fall of the House of Usher
Annabel Lee
The Murders In The Rue Morgue
The Pit and the Pendulum
Ligeia
William Wilson
The Cask of Amontillado
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Gold-Bug
Some Words With a Mummy
The Masque of the Red Death
The City in the Sea
Never Bet the Devil Your Head
The Black Cat
The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Landor's Cottage
Spirits of the Dead
Berenice
A Descent into the Maelstrom
A Predicament
A Tale of Jerusalem
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
Bon-Bon
Diddling, Considered as One of the Exact Sciences
Eleonora
Four Beasts in One: The Homo-Cameleopard
Hop Frog
How to Write a Blackwood Article
King Pest
Lionizing
Loss of Breath
Mellonta Tauta
Mesmeric Revelation
Metzengerstein
Morella
Manuscript Found in a Bottle
Mystification
Shadow: A Parable
Silence: A Fable
Angel of the Odd
The Assignation
The Business Man
The Colloquy of Monos and Una
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
The Devil in the Belfry
The Duc de L'Omelette
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Imp of the Perverse
The Island of the Fay
The Lighthouse
The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.
The Man of the Crowd
The Man that was Used Up
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
The Oblong Box
The Oval Portrait
The Premature Burial
The Purloined Letter
The Power of Words
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
The Domain of Arnheim
The Spectacles
The Sphinx
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade
The Raven
The Fall of the House of Usher
Annabel Lee
The Murders In The Rue Morgue
The Pit and the Pendulum
Ligeia
William Wilson
The Cask of Amontillado
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Gold-Bug
Some Words With a Mummy
The Masque of the Red Death
The City in the Sea
Never Bet the Devil Your Head
The Black Cat
The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Landor's Cottage
Spirits of the Dead
Berenice
A Descent into the Maelstrom
A Predicament
A Tale of Jerusalem
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
Bon-Bon
Diddling, Considered as One of the Exact Sciences
Eleonora
Four Beasts in One: The Homo-Cameleopard
Hop Frog
How to Write a Blackwood Article
King Pest
Lionizing
Loss of Breath
Mellonta Tauta
Mesmeric Revelation
Metzengerstein
Morella
Manuscript Found in a Bottle
Mystification
Shadow: A Parable
Silence: A Fable
Angel of the Odd
The Assignation
The Business Man
The Colloquy of Monos and Una
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
The Devil in the Belfry
The Duc de L'Omelette
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Imp of the Perverse
The Island of the Fay
The Lighthouse
The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.
The Man of the Crowd
The Man that was Used Up
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
The Oblong Box
The Oval Portrait
The Premature Burial
The Purloined Letter
The Power of Words
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
The Domain of Arnheim
The Spectacles
The Sphinx
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade
August 27, 2018
"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door - only this, and nothing more."
312 days later and I have completed this mammoth collection of Poe tales and poems. Considered to be the master of tales filled with mystery and/or the macabre, Poe delivers a range of short stories and poetry that are all contained within this collection.
My rating for this collection may seem harsh, but let me explain... When Poe is good, he is GREAT. But when he is not... it is torture and absolutely unbearable at times. I have zero intention of revisiting about 75% of this collection. In comparison, I'm pretty sure I would be happy to revisit the majority of Lovecraft tales at some point in the future. A lot of readers will compare the two, but for me, when comparing their complete bodies of work, there is no competition.
I was actually surprised by the number of non-horror stories I found. I had assumed Poe primarily wrote these chilling stories filled with dark nights and graveyards, and haunting residences. What I actually found was a great number of mystery and crime stories, which I did not care for. At the beginning of the collection there are also a few stories that focus on hot air balloons. Yep. You heard me right. Safe to say you can avoid these like the plague. So many of the stories were meandering and pointless, it's really quite shocking to me the range in quality across Poe's work.
But enough negativity... the highlight for me, if I had to choose just one, would be The Raven. It is hard for me to even think of this poem without simultaneously considering the corresponding Treehouse of Horror episode in The Simpsons. But thankfully I got past this by listening to the Christopher Lee narration whilst reading along. I would highly recommend doing the same as the narration is so haunting and chilling with accompanying sounds of falling rain and church bells tolling. The grief and sorrow for his lost love Lenore is so heavy in this one, as the raven acts as the embodiment of rationality - reinforcing the fact that Lenore is not coming back through that chamber door. The melancholy tone really sticks with you (once again demonstrating my love for any writing related to grief and loss).
I also loved the poem Annabel Lee. It's a really gorgeous poem that was a joy to read (and by gorgeous I mean quite melancholic and depressing at times - hey, it's Poe!). I'm not really a big fan of poetry, but I appreciated the simplicity and beauty of this one.
In terms of the stories, the following stood out for me:
The Fall of the House of Usher - a perfect gothic tale with its quintessential features, such as a haunted house, a dreary landscape and a mysterious sickness
The Masque of the Red Death - a wonderfully written allegory about life and death, and no matter how rich you may be or what you have in the world, you can't avoid death
The Tell-Tale Heart - quite a disturbing story focusing on paranoia and mental deterioration
The Black Cat - this was horrifying and disturbing and I would highly recommend reading
As you can see, my highlights from the collection are the well-known ones. So if you're interested in checking out Poe, I would strongly recommend sticking to a "Best of" collection. You'll get all the good stuff without the dead weight. It was a long and trying experience reading everything Poe has ever written, but I'm glad I did it. Even through the incredibly boring stories, it was still nice to immerse myself in the works of Poe. I'll just stick to my smaller collections when I revisit in the future.
3 stars.
312 days later and I have completed this mammoth collection of Poe tales and poems. Considered to be the master of tales filled with mystery and/or the macabre, Poe delivers a range of short stories and poetry that are all contained within this collection.
My rating for this collection may seem harsh, but let me explain... When Poe is good, he is GREAT. But when he is not... it is torture and absolutely unbearable at times. I have zero intention of revisiting about 75% of this collection. In comparison, I'm pretty sure I would be happy to revisit the majority of Lovecraft tales at some point in the future. A lot of readers will compare the two, but for me, when comparing their complete bodies of work, there is no competition.
I was actually surprised by the number of non-horror stories I found. I had assumed Poe primarily wrote these chilling stories filled with dark nights and graveyards, and haunting residences. What I actually found was a great number of mystery and crime stories, which I did not care for. At the beginning of the collection there are also a few stories that focus on hot air balloons. Yep. You heard me right. Safe to say you can avoid these like the plague. So many of the stories were meandering and pointless, it's really quite shocking to me the range in quality across Poe's work.
But enough negativity... the highlight for me, if I had to choose just one, would be The Raven. It is hard for me to even think of this poem without simultaneously considering the corresponding Treehouse of Horror episode in The Simpsons. But thankfully I got past this by listening to the Christopher Lee narration whilst reading along. I would highly recommend doing the same as the narration is so haunting and chilling with accompanying sounds of falling rain and church bells tolling. The grief and sorrow for his lost love Lenore is so heavy in this one, as the raven acts as the embodiment of rationality - reinforcing the fact that Lenore is not coming back through that chamber door. The melancholy tone really sticks with you (once again demonstrating my love for any writing related to grief and loss).
I also loved the poem Annabel Lee. It's a really gorgeous poem that was a joy to read (and by gorgeous I mean quite melancholic and depressing at times - hey, it's Poe!). I'm not really a big fan of poetry, but I appreciated the simplicity and beauty of this one.
In terms of the stories, the following stood out for me:
The Fall of the House of Usher - a perfect gothic tale with its quintessential features, such as a haunted house, a dreary landscape and a mysterious sickness
The Masque of the Red Death - a wonderfully written allegory about life and death, and no matter how rich you may be or what you have in the world, you can't avoid death
The Tell-Tale Heart - quite a disturbing story focusing on paranoia and mental deterioration
The Black Cat - this was horrifying and disturbing and I would highly recommend reading
As you can see, my highlights from the collection are the well-known ones. So if you're interested in checking out Poe, I would strongly recommend sticking to a "Best of" collection. You'll get all the good stuff without the dead weight. It was a long and trying experience reading everything Poe has ever written, but I'm glad I did it. Even through the incredibly boring stories, it was still nice to immerse myself in the works of Poe. I'll just stick to my smaller collections when I revisit in the future.
3 stars.
November 25, 2008
Definitely not light reading, but perfect for the fall and winter. My grandmother bought this leatherbound collection for me when I was 12 or so and it took me 5 years or so to read it in its completion. I have to be in the mood to read Poe, but when I am it's the best reading in the world. Very dark and poetic. Great stories, and each story is just short enough to maintain attention span. I recommend this to anyone who appreciates a challenging read.
May 14, 2016
I feel like I need to post a letter to Edgar Allan Poe explaining that it's time we started seeing other people. It's for his own good as well as mine. I can see we just want different things in a relationship. I cracked open this comprehensive collection of Poe's stories and poems right after New Year's. It's been five months. The snow has melted. Summer camp is about to begin for Lumberjane Scouts. Campfires are being built and eerie stories are to be shared in the dark, but after reading two dozen of Poe's most celebrated tales, my relationship with the 19th century mad genius needs space. A lot of it. Poe's writing is often exquisite, his ambiance sinister and ghoulishly delightful, but his antebellum storytelling often left me dissatisfied.
-- The five tales of Edgar Allan Poe that left me with an icy chill are as follows:
1. The Premature Burial (1844)
My favorite. Not only did I agree with Poe’s sentiment — and his frequent theme — that being buried alive is the end all be all of terror, but the story was written in a fanciful yet macabre fashion. Poe recounts several news items regarding premature burial and then his narrator launches into his own tale of living nightmare. This story rocketed along and was a sublime blend of Poe’s two obsessions: the intricately plotted detective mystery and the horror tale.
2. The Oblong Box (1844)
My second favorite story in this collection. Not only does the writing possess clarity and a dash of romance (set aboard the packet-ship Independence as she sails from Charleston, S.C. to New York) but the requisite mystery of what is inside the peculiar oblong box that the narrator’s friend has lugged into his state room is presented with vivid delight. I found this one of Poe's more accessible stories and thus, a wonderful entry point.
3. William Wilson (1839)
The first Poe tale I read where the author’s sensibility came alive for me. The writing is like a Swiss watch and Poe does a craftsman’s job of generating dread. A man using the alias “William Wilson” recounts how beginning in his school days in England he was plagued by a classmate with the same name and physical traits. Wilson’s doppelgänger began to dress like him and insists on addressing the narrator in a whisper. Balancing the creepiness is the narrator’s descriptions of his own rakish behavior drinking, chasing woman or cheating at cards.
4. The Black Cat (1843)
In an unnamed city, one I pictured as New Orleans due to mayhem and murder weighing down on the narrator like barometric pressure, a docile man who shares a love of animals with his wife turns bitter with alcohol abuse, ultimately heaping hell on the black cat that he loves. As the man’s morbid self-intentions play out against the feline, there is a lesson: never fuck with a cat! This seven page long tickles with terror and was the first time I felt that Poe’s sometimes obtuse prose decoded itself.
5. The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
A wonderfully ghoulish story documenting the exacting efforts of an Italian nobleman named Montresor to avenge an insult by a peer named Fortunato. His revenge involves luring Fortunato into the catacombs beneath Montresor's palazzo using a cask of amontillado sherry wine as bait. Of course, Poe leads the reader to his central obsession: being buried alive, which was apparently to 19th century man what needing to call Comcast is to 21st century man. The horror!
-- These four tales spooked me a bit, but I found out it was only the wind:
6. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
In an obscure library in the Rue Montmarte in Paris, our narrator introduces C. Auguste Lupin, a young gentleman from an illustrious family reduced to poverty (autobiographical material from Poe). The expatriate takes up residence with the analytical Frenchman in a “time-eaten and grotesque mansion” where the boys read and write and live a bohemian existence that seems to have been the inspiration for the characters in Fight Club. Their sabbatical is interrupted by the sensational murders of a Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, Mademoiselle Camille L’Espanaye on the Rue Morgue, which Dupin employs his considerable observational skills to solve. The story is alternatively ghoulish and fun, with wild reverberations to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, albeit with a nearly impenetrable prologue in which Poe issues a treatise on chess.
7. The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)
In Harlem, New York, our narrator recounts his study of Mesmerism, which Poe classifies as a form of hypnotism that enables the practitioner to interview subjects who have been placed into a deep state of relaxation and can travel outside their own bodies. With the health of the narrator’s good friend M. Ernest Valdemar in serious decline, he places the subject under hypnosis on his death bed and attempts to defeat the effects of death. Madness and horror ensue! Terrific final paragraph.
8. The Sphinx (1846)
This is a pretty good tale. I enjoyed the clarity of the writing and the manner in which Poe sets the tableau of a cottage on the Hudson River where the narrator is spending the summer with a friend while a cholera outbreak ravages New York. News is delivered by post revealing the passing of another acquaintance to the outbreak while the narrator observes something terrifying out the window. My expectations for thrills or chills weren’t met, but the story is a beguiling one.
9. The Oval Portrait (1842)
Very short tale in which a wounded man and his valet seek refuge in a villa that features some macabre artwork on the wall. I loved how succinct this story was and its setup, but ultimately, there was really no threat present to the narrator other than some mild surprise.
-- Now, we have something completely different than I'm completely indifferent about:
10. The Gold-Bug (1843)
The most popular tale Poe ever wrote. On the remote Sullivan Island off the coast of Charleston, our narrator recounts an adventure with his hermit friend, Mr. William Legrand, and Legrand’s loyal companion, an old negro called Jupiter. A naturalist and analyst, Legrand becomes obsessed with a rare gold beetle he discovers, which he is convinced leads to riches. Rather than a descent into horror, the story has an uncharacteristically fantastic rather than tragic ending for Poe with the discovery of the buried treasure of Captain Kidd. Casual racism and obsessive cryptography also included.
-- And finally, we have some stuff that didn't stick to the wall and just made a mess:
11. The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842)
Sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Initially published in three installments in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion, this story has the heft of something where the author was paid by the word. Amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin is contracted to solve the mysterious drowning of Marie Roget, a perfume shop employee. I abandoned it. Page long blocks of dialogue will do that.
12. The Purloined Letter (1844)
Another sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue. A police inspector seeks the help of C. Auguste Lupin to consult on an unsolved crime. A letter has been stolen by the nefarious Minister D— which places an unnamed woman at his mercy. The authorities know that D— has the letter but have been unable to recover it from his residence or person. inspector spends two pages describing the crime and then Lupin returns to describe in four pages how he solved it.
13. The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
In an unnamed county, our narrator is drawn into the dissolution of a gloomy and unsettling mansion he passes in his travels. The master of the house, Roderick Usher, is a childhood friend now ailing from a melancholy of spirit and the narrator is summoned to keep his old friend company. Usher has a sister, Madeline, also suffering from madness who soon dies. The men seal her in a tomb below the house. This is a tale I must believe was written under the influence of beer; a convoluted work of gobbledygook. The ending is vivid but the story rambles on for too long.
14. The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
Four-page tale of madness, murder and terror in which the narrator fashions the homicide of a kind, elderly neighbor whose pale blue eye upset the narrator. However, the ticking of his victim’s dead heart haunts him. This is one of Poe’s more drunken and disorderly stories. It seems to be missing a beginning and end. The atmosphere of his better stories like The Black Cat or The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar is missing.
15. The Pit and the Pendulum (1842)
I’m not sure whether I missed something about this tale. Our narrator is sentenced for high crimes by some scary judges in Toledo and wakes up in a dungeon, where he’s alternatively tortured by choosing between a plunge into a deep circular pit, or being sliced by a razor sharp pendulum, swinging from the ceiling. What is this, Saw: The Early Days?
16. The Hop Frog (1849)
Here’s a story that I’m convinced Poe wrote drunk: a crippled dwarf known as Hop Frog, who serves as court jester in some unidentified kingdom (specifics of no concern to the inebriated wit) takes stock of the cruelty the king and his seven advisers visit on a fellow subject of the court and plans revenge. I wasn’t laughing at the end of the story — which has the venom and brutality of a Punch and Judy show — as I was cringing.
17. The Spectacles (1844)
The first half of the story is as close as Poe comes to a love story and his descriptions of lust in the 1840s—when a man needed to be introduced socially to an attractive women, asking her what she was reading out of the question--are splendid. Suffice it to say, this does not end well for the lovestruck man, or for me, as I was baffled and disappointed by the resolution to the tale.
18. Ligeia (1838)
Ugh. More adventures in necrophilia by Edgar Allan Poe. This story is so obtuse. The narrator goes to absurd lengths to describe how beautiful his dead wife Legeria was that it was all I could do not to want him to throw himself from a train and join her.
19. Some Words with a Mummy (1845)
Tedious.
20. A Tale of Jerusalem (1832)
Unreadable.
In summary, my initial foray into the world of Edgar Allan Poe reinforced instincts that my ardor lies in the craft of storytelling and introduction of characters whose desires I can relate to on some level. Poe can spin words beautifully but this is not always the same thing as spinning a great yarn. In fact, it rarely is for me. I think my enjoyment of his work would be magnified by one hundred times if I attended a live reading of some of these stories, but as for thrills that were able to leap off the page 170 years ago and delight me, the sensation was fleeting, I'm sorry to report. I own a copy of this volume and may pull it off the shelf in the countdown to Halloween Night in the coming years, but I'm glad to move on to authors who are stronger at story.
-- The five tales of Edgar Allan Poe that left me with an icy chill are as follows:
1. The Premature Burial (1844)
My favorite. Not only did I agree with Poe’s sentiment — and his frequent theme — that being buried alive is the end all be all of terror, but the story was written in a fanciful yet macabre fashion. Poe recounts several news items regarding premature burial and then his narrator launches into his own tale of living nightmare. This story rocketed along and was a sublime blend of Poe’s two obsessions: the intricately plotted detective mystery and the horror tale.
2. The Oblong Box (1844)
My second favorite story in this collection. Not only does the writing possess clarity and a dash of romance (set aboard the packet-ship Independence as she sails from Charleston, S.C. to New York) but the requisite mystery of what is inside the peculiar oblong box that the narrator’s friend has lugged into his state room is presented with vivid delight. I found this one of Poe's more accessible stories and thus, a wonderful entry point.
3. William Wilson (1839)
The first Poe tale I read where the author’s sensibility came alive for me. The writing is like a Swiss watch and Poe does a craftsman’s job of generating dread. A man using the alias “William Wilson” recounts how beginning in his school days in England he was plagued by a classmate with the same name and physical traits. Wilson’s doppelgänger began to dress like him and insists on addressing the narrator in a whisper. Balancing the creepiness is the narrator’s descriptions of his own rakish behavior drinking, chasing woman or cheating at cards.
4. The Black Cat (1843)
In an unnamed city, one I pictured as New Orleans due to mayhem and murder weighing down on the narrator like barometric pressure, a docile man who shares a love of animals with his wife turns bitter with alcohol abuse, ultimately heaping hell on the black cat that he loves. As the man’s morbid self-intentions play out against the feline, there is a lesson: never fuck with a cat! This seven page long tickles with terror and was the first time I felt that Poe’s sometimes obtuse prose decoded itself.
5. The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
A wonderfully ghoulish story documenting the exacting efforts of an Italian nobleman named Montresor to avenge an insult by a peer named Fortunato. His revenge involves luring Fortunato into the catacombs beneath Montresor's palazzo using a cask of amontillado sherry wine as bait. Of course, Poe leads the reader to his central obsession: being buried alive, which was apparently to 19th century man what needing to call Comcast is to 21st century man. The horror!
-- These four tales spooked me a bit, but I found out it was only the wind:
6. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
In an obscure library in the Rue Montmarte in Paris, our narrator introduces C. Auguste Lupin, a young gentleman from an illustrious family reduced to poverty (autobiographical material from Poe). The expatriate takes up residence with the analytical Frenchman in a “time-eaten and grotesque mansion” where the boys read and write and live a bohemian existence that seems to have been the inspiration for the characters in Fight Club. Their sabbatical is interrupted by the sensational murders of a Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, Mademoiselle Camille L’Espanaye on the Rue Morgue, which Dupin employs his considerable observational skills to solve. The story is alternatively ghoulish and fun, with wild reverberations to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, albeit with a nearly impenetrable prologue in which Poe issues a treatise on chess.
7. The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)
In Harlem, New York, our narrator recounts his study of Mesmerism, which Poe classifies as a form of hypnotism that enables the practitioner to interview subjects who have been placed into a deep state of relaxation and can travel outside their own bodies. With the health of the narrator’s good friend M. Ernest Valdemar in serious decline, he places the subject under hypnosis on his death bed and attempts to defeat the effects of death. Madness and horror ensue! Terrific final paragraph.
8. The Sphinx (1846)
This is a pretty good tale. I enjoyed the clarity of the writing and the manner in which Poe sets the tableau of a cottage on the Hudson River where the narrator is spending the summer with a friend while a cholera outbreak ravages New York. News is delivered by post revealing the passing of another acquaintance to the outbreak while the narrator observes something terrifying out the window. My expectations for thrills or chills weren’t met, but the story is a beguiling one.
9. The Oval Portrait (1842)
Very short tale in which a wounded man and his valet seek refuge in a villa that features some macabre artwork on the wall. I loved how succinct this story was and its setup, but ultimately, there was really no threat present to the narrator other than some mild surprise.
-- Now, we have something completely different than I'm completely indifferent about:
10. The Gold-Bug (1843)
The most popular tale Poe ever wrote. On the remote Sullivan Island off the coast of Charleston, our narrator recounts an adventure with his hermit friend, Mr. William Legrand, and Legrand’s loyal companion, an old negro called Jupiter. A naturalist and analyst, Legrand becomes obsessed with a rare gold beetle he discovers, which he is convinced leads to riches. Rather than a descent into horror, the story has an uncharacteristically fantastic rather than tragic ending for Poe with the discovery of the buried treasure of Captain Kidd. Casual racism and obsessive cryptography also included.
-- And finally, we have some stuff that didn't stick to the wall and just made a mess:
11. The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842)
Sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Initially published in three installments in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion, this story has the heft of something where the author was paid by the word. Amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin is contracted to solve the mysterious drowning of Marie Roget, a perfume shop employee. I abandoned it. Page long blocks of dialogue will do that.
12. The Purloined Letter (1844)
Another sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue. A police inspector seeks the help of C. Auguste Lupin to consult on an unsolved crime. A letter has been stolen by the nefarious Minister D— which places an unnamed woman at his mercy. The authorities know that D— has the letter but have been unable to recover it from his residence or person. inspector spends two pages describing the crime and then Lupin returns to describe in four pages how he solved it.
13. The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
In an unnamed county, our narrator is drawn into the dissolution of a gloomy and unsettling mansion he passes in his travels. The master of the house, Roderick Usher, is a childhood friend now ailing from a melancholy of spirit and the narrator is summoned to keep his old friend company. Usher has a sister, Madeline, also suffering from madness who soon dies. The men seal her in a tomb below the house. This is a tale I must believe was written under the influence of beer; a convoluted work of gobbledygook. The ending is vivid but the story rambles on for too long.
14. The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
Four-page tale of madness, murder and terror in which the narrator fashions the homicide of a kind, elderly neighbor whose pale blue eye upset the narrator. However, the ticking of his victim’s dead heart haunts him. This is one of Poe’s more drunken and disorderly stories. It seems to be missing a beginning and end. The atmosphere of his better stories like The Black Cat or The Facts In the Case of M. Valdemar is missing.
15. The Pit and the Pendulum (1842)
I’m not sure whether I missed something about this tale. Our narrator is sentenced for high crimes by some scary judges in Toledo and wakes up in a dungeon, where he’s alternatively tortured by choosing between a plunge into a deep circular pit, or being sliced by a razor sharp pendulum, swinging from the ceiling. What is this, Saw: The Early Days?
16. The Hop Frog (1849)
Here’s a story that I’m convinced Poe wrote drunk: a crippled dwarf known as Hop Frog, who serves as court jester in some unidentified kingdom (specifics of no concern to the inebriated wit) takes stock of the cruelty the king and his seven advisers visit on a fellow subject of the court and plans revenge. I wasn’t laughing at the end of the story — which has the venom and brutality of a Punch and Judy show — as I was cringing.
17. The Spectacles (1844)
The first half of the story is as close as Poe comes to a love story and his descriptions of lust in the 1840s—when a man needed to be introduced socially to an attractive women, asking her what she was reading out of the question--are splendid. Suffice it to say, this does not end well for the lovestruck man, or for me, as I was baffled and disappointed by the resolution to the tale.
18. Ligeia (1838)
Ugh. More adventures in necrophilia by Edgar Allan Poe. This story is so obtuse. The narrator goes to absurd lengths to describe how beautiful his dead wife Legeria was that it was all I could do not to want him to throw himself from a train and join her.
19. Some Words with a Mummy (1845)
Tedious.
20. A Tale of Jerusalem (1832)
Unreadable.
In summary, my initial foray into the world of Edgar Allan Poe reinforced instincts that my ardor lies in the craft of storytelling and introduction of characters whose desires I can relate to on some level. Poe can spin words beautifully but this is not always the same thing as spinning a great yarn. In fact, it rarely is for me. I think my enjoyment of his work would be magnified by one hundred times if I attended a live reading of some of these stories, but as for thrills that were able to leap off the page 170 years ago and delight me, the sensation was fleeting, I'm sorry to report. I own a copy of this volume and may pull it off the shelf in the countdown to Halloween Night in the coming years, but I'm glad to move on to authors who are stronger at story.
February 20, 2022
A former student gave me this book many moons ago. I picked it up today to read cover to cover, instead of picking out my favorites. I do love Poe so very much! This is a great collection of poems and prose. In particular, I love the following poems: “Introduction,” “Romance,” “Annabel Lee,” “Lenore,” “Eulalie - A Song,” “To Miss Louse Olivia Hunter,” “For Annie,” “Bridal Ballad,” “Song,” “Spirits of the Dead,” “A Dream Within A Dream,” “Alone,” “To -,” “The Lake - To -,” “The Conquerer Worm,” “The Raven,” “Ulalume - A Ballad,” “To My Mother,” “Eldorado,” “The Haunted Palace,” and “The Bells.” Some poems can be daunting for a novice to Poe or poetry but they are beautiful if a reader gives them a chance. The selected pieces of prose are also a challenge for non-English majors. I love “The Philosophy of Composition” (detailing how he came to compose “The Raven”), “Letter to B-,” “Preface to Tamerlane,” and “Preface to The Raven.” “The Poetic Principle” and “A review of Longfellow, April 1842” are amazing for the epic insults Poe gives his fellow poets (“The fact is, that perseverance is one thing, and genius quite another” 185). Sometimes he was subtle in his venom and sometimes quite in their faces. This is a great collection of his poems and prose. Probably not for just anyone but definitely for me - a poetry-loving, Poe fanatic, and English major/teacher.
December 17, 2013
The Master himself
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason ( as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE,
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling-my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason ( as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE,
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling-my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
Read
October 20, 2021Enjoyed reading Poe. Very useful edition, but not quite complete. Missing stories include: “The Landscape Garden,” “Maelzel’s Chess-Player,” and “Philosophy of Furniture.” Missing poems include: “Song,” and “In Youth I Have Known.”
April 24, 2023
The samples here are of stories which we would now class as "horror" or "suspense", but which Poe submitted to the public mainly as essays.
The Premature Burial (1844) by Edgar Allan Poe purports to be a factual account or essay. It tells of several cases where a person suffering from catalepsy was buried alive, some of which were discovered in time, some not. There is a strong attempt on the part of the narrator to convince the reader that, "truth can be more terrifying than fiction," in order to prepare the ground for belief in his final example.
Nowadays we would probably categorise this condition as sleep paralysis but it was a common fear of the time. Indeed it is one of Poe's favourite themes, as is the crypt. After the careful build-up The ending to this tale provides a nice twist.
Some Words with a Mummy (1845) was again presented as an essay, but is actually an example of Poe's satirical humour at its blackest. The narrator has overindulged at a dinner he has attended, and retires to bed. He is (ostensibly) awoken and summoned to an unwrapping of a mummy at his friend Dr Ponnonner's house, along with a group of other learned men. There is a careful account of the unwrapping of the mummy's many-layered coverings,
The story satirises both science and knowledge, poking fun at Egyptology on the way. The prevailing attitude of the time was that in the Western world humanity had reached the height of civilization and knowledge due to scientific and industrial revolutions. A nice touch is that the mummy of the title is called "Allamistakeo".
William Wilson (1839) is a semi-autobiographical story. It takes much of its setting from the early schooldays of Poe himself, referring back to when he spent 3 years at a boys' boarding school in Stoke Newington, London. It is told in the first person; William meets another boy in his school who shares the same name, has roughly the same appearance, and is born on exactly the same date. This other William often imitates the narrator's voice and mannerisms, whispering arrogantly in the narrator's ear, making him increasingly uneasy and nervous. Poe sent a copy of this story to Washington Irving, so the ending may well be an homage to a specific story of Irving's,
Thou Art the Man (1844) is an early experiment in what became known as "detective fiction." It is however not nearly as successful as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", possibly because the standpoint taken is that of the narrator seeking to expose the true murderer, so that the element of mystery is missing. It is a tale of a missing body, murder and betrayal; there is a decaying corpse, a case of vintage wine and a certain amount of sleight-of-hand. And somebody near the end pronounces the devastating words, "Thou art the Man!"
The Imp of the Perverse (1845) is another example of a story posing as an essay. It is an examination of theories, rather than being heavy on plot. The "imp of the perverse" is a metaphoric spirit, and refers to the urge we humans feel to do something "merely because we feel we should not." The flimsy story describes Some critics theorise that Poe was forming an early theory, which was later developed by Sigmund Freud into that of the self-conscious and repression:
"We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss - we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink away from the danger. Unaccountably we remain…"
Five of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories have been reviewed here. I have previously reviewed many others, and those reviews can be displayed by searching for Edgar Allan Poe on my Goodreads shelves.
Here are links to reviews of 2 other stories which the author himself presented to the public as essays:
The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether link here
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar link here
The Premature Burial (1844) by Edgar Allan Poe purports to be a factual account or essay. It tells of several cases where a person suffering from catalepsy was buried alive, some of which were discovered in time, some not. There is a strong attempt on the part of the narrator to convince the reader that, "truth can be more terrifying than fiction," in order to prepare the ground for belief in his final example.
Nowadays we would probably categorise this condition as sleep paralysis but it was a common fear of the time. Indeed it is one of Poe's favourite themes, as is the crypt. After the careful build-up The ending to this tale provides a nice twist.
Some Words with a Mummy (1845) was again presented as an essay, but is actually an example of Poe's satirical humour at its blackest. The narrator has overindulged at a dinner he has attended, and retires to bed. He is (ostensibly) awoken and summoned to an unwrapping of a mummy at his friend Dr Ponnonner's house, along with a group of other learned men. There is a careful account of the unwrapping of the mummy's many-layered coverings,
The story satirises both science and knowledge, poking fun at Egyptology on the way. The prevailing attitude of the time was that in the Western world humanity had reached the height of civilization and knowledge due to scientific and industrial revolutions. A nice touch is that the mummy of the title is called "Allamistakeo".
William Wilson (1839) is a semi-autobiographical story. It takes much of its setting from the early schooldays of Poe himself, referring back to when he spent 3 years at a boys' boarding school in Stoke Newington, London. It is told in the first person; William meets another boy in his school who shares the same name, has roughly the same appearance, and is born on exactly the same date. This other William often imitates the narrator's voice and mannerisms, whispering arrogantly in the narrator's ear, making him increasingly uneasy and nervous. Poe sent a copy of this story to Washington Irving, so the ending may well be an homage to a specific story of Irving's,
Thou Art the Man (1844) is an early experiment in what became known as "detective fiction." It is however not nearly as successful as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", possibly because the standpoint taken is that of the narrator seeking to expose the true murderer, so that the element of mystery is missing. It is a tale of a missing body, murder and betrayal; there is a decaying corpse, a case of vintage wine and a certain amount of sleight-of-hand. And somebody near the end pronounces the devastating words, "Thou art the Man!"
The Imp of the Perverse (1845) is another example of a story posing as an essay. It is an examination of theories, rather than being heavy on plot. The "imp of the perverse" is a metaphoric spirit, and refers to the urge we humans feel to do something "merely because we feel we should not." The flimsy story describes Some critics theorise that Poe was forming an early theory, which was later developed by Sigmund Freud into that of the self-conscious and repression:
"We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss - we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink away from the danger. Unaccountably we remain…"
Five of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories have been reviewed here. I have previously reviewed many others, and those reviews can be displayed by searching for Edgar Allan Poe on my Goodreads shelves.
Here are links to reviews of 2 other stories which the author himself presented to the public as essays:
The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether link here
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar link here
November 30, 2007
Not many people outside of literary study or detective fiction fandom realize that the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Poe's Dupin. Dupin was the brilliant and insightful idle noble who occasionally aided the authorities in particularly difficult cases. However, unlike Holmes, Dupin took it up merely as a hobby, mimicking Holmes' brother Mycroft.
I'm not fond of Poe's poetry. Emerson's leveling of 'Jingle Man' is appropriate. Poe puts sounds together, but usually says very little with them. It is unusual that his prose was so varied while his poetry tended to obsessive repetition. Poe presents an example of the turning point when poetry ceased to represent the most complex and dense literary form (as in Milton and Eliot) and became the most frivolous and unrefined (the beat poets), while prose moved contrarily from the light-hearted to the serious.
When divorced from his single-minded prosody, Poe's mastery of the language elegantly serves the needs of mood, characterization, and action. This is not always the case: his Ligeia retains his poetic narrowness, but his detective stories have a gentleness and wit found nowhere else in his oeuvre.
The three Dupin stories helped to inspire detective fiction, using suspense and convoluted mystery to tantalize and challenge the reader. He may not have been as influential or innovative as Wilkie Collins, but his contribution still stands.
Any book of Poe's is worth purchasing simply for these three stories. They are studies in the careful use of language to develop mood, character, and drive--even in a sparse plot. They are not quite the equals of Ambrose Bierce's short fiction, but they are solid enough.
I'm not fond of Poe's poetry. Emerson's leveling of 'Jingle Man' is appropriate. Poe puts sounds together, but usually says very little with them. It is unusual that his prose was so varied while his poetry tended to obsessive repetition. Poe presents an example of the turning point when poetry ceased to represent the most complex and dense literary form (as in Milton and Eliot) and became the most frivolous and unrefined (the beat poets), while prose moved contrarily from the light-hearted to the serious.
When divorced from his single-minded prosody, Poe's mastery of the language elegantly serves the needs of mood, characterization, and action. This is not always the case: his Ligeia retains his poetic narrowness, but his detective stories have a gentleness and wit found nowhere else in his oeuvre.
The three Dupin stories helped to inspire detective fiction, using suspense and convoluted mystery to tantalize and challenge the reader. He may not have been as influential or innovative as Wilkie Collins, but his contribution still stands.
Any book of Poe's is worth purchasing simply for these three stories. They are studies in the careful use of language to develop mood, character, and drive--even in a sparse plot. They are not quite the equals of Ambrose Bierce's short fiction, but they are solid enough.
January 2, 2023
reviews left on the individual works of each story and poem.
December 19, 2022
I’ve left individual reviews on every story and poem that has a Goodreads page. There’s a reason Poe is known for his horror, he excels at it. His ventures into comedy and fantasy usually always missed the mark for me. I did enjoy his poetry quite a lot.
May 26, 2008
Holy crap, it’s a brick of brilliance! This doorstop-sized volume contains the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe. The poetry, the essays, the short stories – you got it here.
Holy crap.
Pick this up and skim a few of his works and you’ll know whether or not you want it. If you’re studying authors, though, why wouldn’t you get this? It gives you unparalleled access to the complete artistic thoughts of one of America’s most important early writers.
In reading this I was surprised by how many good ones were in here. Previously I’d been assigned to read the terribly dated and melodramatic or borderline nonsensical Poe classics, like “The Raven” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” But reading through his works freely I found a lot of variety and interesting stories I’d never heard of. “Hop Frog,” the revenge story of an abused dwarf. “Black Cat,” of a bizarre murder plot. “Annabel Lee,” of a lost beauty and the sea. Gothic thinking, careful plotting and macabre morality for hundreds of pages. Come and get your Poe.
Holy crap.
Pick this up and skim a few of his works and you’ll know whether or not you want it. If you’re studying authors, though, why wouldn’t you get this? It gives you unparalleled access to the complete artistic thoughts of one of America’s most important early writers.
In reading this I was surprised by how many good ones were in here. Previously I’d been assigned to read the terribly dated and melodramatic or borderline nonsensical Poe classics, like “The Raven” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” But reading through his works freely I found a lot of variety and interesting stories I’d never heard of. “Hop Frog,” the revenge story of an abused dwarf. “Black Cat,” of a bizarre murder plot. “Annabel Lee,” of a lost beauty and the sea. Gothic thinking, careful plotting and macabre morality for hundreds of pages. Come and get your Poe.
June 1, 2024
Who can’t appreciate the style and substance of horror legend Edgar Allen Poe? Dark, dreadful, and dreamy, Poe has made an unshakable foundation for what it means to be a voice for the otherworldly. A must read collection.
January 2, 2023
reviews left on individual works. a wonderful experience to read all of his works, and i will probabl y do it again one day.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,322 reviews