About this title: Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most original writers in the history of American letters, a genius who was tragically misunderstood in his lifetime. He was a seminal figure in the development of science fiction and the detective story, and exerted a great influence on Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, and Charles Baudelaire, who championed him long before Poe was appreciated in his own country. Baudelaire's enthusiasm brought Poe a wide audience in Europe, and his writing came to have enormous importance for modern French literature. This edition includes his most well-known works- ...
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Description: Fair. Dust Cover Missing. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780394716787ISBN:0394716787
Description: Near Fine. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. $16.00 Publishers Cover Price, 1026 Pages, Black-Orange and Silver Colored Covers. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: The Modern Library
Date Published: 1965
Description: Very Good. Hardcover book in very good condition, clean and tightly bound. No dust jacket. Otherwise like in like new condition. Ships next business day from Oklahoma. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 1975
ISBN-13:9780394716787ISBN:0394716787
Description: Good. Light creasing, edgewear. No stamps or marks. Light tanning of page edges. All of the tales by the master of the detective and the macabre story. 53 of his best-known poems plus essays and criticisms. read more
"I must admit to having a soft spot for Edgar Allan Poe. He was the boon companion of my adolescence. Whilst others of my generation were developing the herd mentality and lavishing their time on football, chopper bikes and the Bay City Rollers, I was poring over The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death. Call me underdeveloped, call me what the hell you like, but to my mind I was developing a taste for quality literature. And Poe is, whatever you may have gleaned about him from cheap movies and comic book adaptations, a thoroughly top-notch writer in the Romantic tradition.
He doesn't really fit comfortably into the classic Gothic genre, though many regard him as one of its late and finest flowerings. For me, Gothic means Ann Radcliffe and Matthew 'Monk' Lewis. It means wild landscapes, maidens in distress, magnificently evil villains, ghosts and ghouls, deserted castles in the mountains and haunted chambers. Poe's terrors are more psychological. The House of Usher seems like a physical house, but it is really a tainted bloodline reaching its diseased end in Roderick Usher, and a sick brain splitting down the middle. Madeleine Usher, buried alive by her neurotic brother, has more to do with Freud than with a penny dreadful. Poe's castles and dungeons, maelstroms and cities under the sea are like Kafka's Castle: in the mind, and all the more terrifying for that.
He draws heavily on the unconscious, is one of those in whom the divide between that and its conscious counterpart is a very permeable one to say the least, and you can see how he had such an influence on Baudelaire and just about every modern writer of horror. But he was also the inventor of the modern detective story and wrote a good deal of poetry. He was like a battlefield: he liked to think of himself as logical and calculating, but all the time this great underground current of dark forces was heaving against his early Victorian world of science and progress, and making life pretty difficult. He certainly suffered for his art, and it's just as well that he didn't want to achieve immortality simply through not dying, like Woody Allen.
But his influence since his death has been enormous. Rachmaninov wrote 'The Bells' in homage, and more recently Roger Corman made films loosely based on his tales and starring the likes of Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. He has inspired rock albums and graphic art, and more than his share of bad imitators.
Poe's is a world of strange lights and deep shadows, but I find it comforting as well as unnerving. I can remember where and when I read most of his tales and poems, and when I read them now the past comes gently tapping at my own chamber door."
"Poe is so focused that every one of his short stories, as well as his detective novels, create the same dominant impression -- beautiful gloom. Whether its a novel like Murders in the Rue Morgue, or poetry like The Raven, or one of his gorgeous short stories like "The Tell-tale Heart" or "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe's writing works as well today as in the mid 1840's when he wrote it.
My personal favorite is "Masque of the Red Death." Here, Poe not only creates an amazingly intricate, vivid, visceral setting (a masked ball held at an isolated medieval castle), but he also packs the story with eccentric and fascinating characters whose actions not only horrify and seduce the reader, but provoke contemplation and soul-searching afterward.
And isn't that the definition of a 'classic' -- a work that strongly moves you emotionally while you read it, but afterward you can't stop thinking about it?
By the way, when you read Poe, have a dictionary handy. He loves to embellish his tales with exotic language."
"Having read all the well-known stories and poems, I dug into this tome with anticipation, expecting many of his more obscure works to be fully as good. But I was vastly disappointed.
As we all know, his horror stories are real gems. There's a reason he's called a master of the genre. And I much enjoyed (re)reading them.
But the rest of this volume is filled with some of the dullest writings imaginable. Meandering, pointless, filled with useless tangents. Stories which skillfully build up suspense, only to end abruptly, often in the midst of the climax. Parodies of literary journals long since out of vogue. Impenetrable essays on the nature and rationale of poetry.
It surprises me that the same author can write a few stories that are so good, and many that are very bad, with almost no middle ground between.
My favorite stories remain The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar and The Cask of Amontillado; as for the poems, it amazes me that The Raven is so good, and everything else so bad."
"While I haven't read the entire book, I have ventured through most of his works. I think Poe makes it safe to say that the usage of opium is sure to create some interesting situations."
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