"An artist is usually a damned liar, but his art, if it be art, will tell you the truth of his day." D.H. Lawrence.

Burying people alive, ghosts, macabre deaths of usually delicate and young women, dark magic, effects of inebriation and hallucination, torture, whirlpools sucking people out of their time, fatal plagues, abnormal psychological states, obsessional behaviors... William Blake in prose.
If D.H. Lawrence was any close to right about his predicament I wouldn't have liked to be in Mr.Poe' More...

I had never read much Poe, and I bought Tales of Mystery and Imagination mostly because of the illustrations, but once I started reading I couldn't put it down. The edition I have - and you should have it too - features the original illustrations by the Irish artist (and genius Harry Clarke). His drawings are dark and slightly chilling and enhance the text without distracting from it. Other, more famous artists have tackled Poe (Manet, the father of modern art, was one), but no one has done it a More...

In a Word? - Perplexing!

I am huge fan of Poe. And although I am only required to read three short stories of his in this anthology, I read the whole book. And boy, did that make my head hurt.
Originally I was only going to read:
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Pit and the Pendulum and
The Purloined Letter
So these are the stories that I will refer to in this review.

I tend to find with Poe that I can either devour his stories in one sitting, or I struggle to so much as understand what he is trying More...

Finally, after owning this book for 28 years, I worked my way through all of Poe's works -- and love him more now than ever before.

I now recognize his brilliance in a different way. Yes, there are the wicked, macabre tales that are classic Poe. But, he also was a maestro of sci-fi, mystery, adventure and romance. And talk about humor -- The Spectacles is now one of my favorites!

A very nice edition, I bought this as a reading copy from Barnes and Noble this Christmas after I had stumbled across a gorgeous original 1920s edition with all of Harry Clarke's original artwork in it. I did not want to add wear to that large volume by actually reading it from cover to cover, so I was happily surprised to find this copy. Not all of Clarke's brooding, creepy, beautiful Art Nouveau artwork is included in this edition, but it does include most of it. I am not sure why some was not More...

Poe has so permeated popular culture and the general zeitgeist of modern-day society that even if you haven't actually read the stories, you know them. "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Fall of the House of Usher," are just the most famous horror/suspense pieces. Just as dark and spooky are "The Black Cat," and "A Descent into the Maelstrom."

Unfortunately, if you actually read a lot of these tales you realize tha More...

I think that everybody has at least one story by Edgar Allan Poe that they like. In Tales of Mystery and Imagination, it has some of his best and most famous stories. It has stories like, The Tell Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Hop Frog, and many more. Edgar Allen Poe was one of the greatest authors of all time and reading Tales of Mystery and Imagination will prove that to anyone. I have never been one for reading but reading More...

I just reviewed another Calla Edition (The Ship That Sailed to Mars, by Wm. Timlin), and then remembered that I have had this Poe volume for a while. Clarke's illustrations of Poe's stories are stunning. His work is highly similar to Aubrey Beardsley's. I don't rate these quite as high as Dulac's illustrations for Poe's poems, but Clarke's black & white illustrations strike me as the perfect complement to Poe's stories.

Another plug for Calla Editions! If you love illustrated classics, the Ca More...

Ik heb van Edgar Allan Poe een aantal verhalen uit een bundel gelezen. Het ene verhaal sprak me meer aan dan het andere. Het verhaal van de zwarte kat vond ik lekker griezelen en kende ik nog niet (ondanks het feit dat dit verhaal heel bekend schijnt te zijn). Moord in de Rue Morgue herkende ik tijdens het lezen en ik kan me herinneren dat ik het toentertijd een erg goed verhaal vond. Omdat ik het al kende, vond ik het nu toch minder omdat het verrassingseffect dan weg is. Na een aantal verhalen More...

Back to the classics. I picked this up in a charity shop some time ago and I'd been meaning to get to it. Having been half-heartedly introduced to E.A.P. in my middle-school days (reading "The Raven" and "The Cask Of Amontillado" as assigments), I thought I should give him another shot.

Ol' Edgar Allan fared much better this time around. "The Cask.." was much more sinister and calculated than I'd remembered and "The Murders At The Rue Morgue" seemed grislier and even though I 'knew' the ending, s More...

Poe is now a household name. An American institution. Everyone knows Poe, though few have really delved into more than one or two of his short stories. I'm also pretty sure he was completely insane. Which means he was brilliant, and everyone should read his work.

As the title of the book says, there are many different stories in here, and admittedly, they are not all of the same caliber. It seems that Poe generally became a better writer as he wrote more and more stuff, and I think his later work More...

I read some of Poe's short stories in Italian ages ago and I decided to read them again in original language now that my English is good enough. Or at least so I thought. At times I found it really hard to continue reading because of the old-fashioned language Poe uses, I'm not used to it and found myself rereading the same sentence multiple times (reading it late at night when I was really tired probably didn't help much either). Anyway, I never leave books unfinished so I kept going and everyt More...

ilkokulda okumuştum yeniden aldım ve yazara hayran kaldım bütün hikayeleri adlı 5 ciltlik seriyi de almayı planlıyorum zaten ilk kitabını aldım :))

"And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallow More...

Hmmm - there's only so much premature burial and being bricked up in a cellar that you can take, I suppose. Surprises were the stories featuring Dupin that weren't "Murders in the Rue Morgue" because I didn't know that the character was SUCH an influence on Sherlock Holmes. Reading the full collection one after another, the tales get a bit too samey and when he's not burying people alive Poe's florid description is almost unbearable (the tale Landor's Cottage, coming straight after Domain of Arn More...

Harry Clarke's vivid and disturbing illustrations, reminiscent of the work of Aubrey Beardsley, bring hideous life to Poe's stories, and I find myself returning to both the stories and the illustrations again and again.

My parents had a copy of the original version of this book, published by Tudor Publishing Co. Calla Editions has done a truly excellent job with this reproduction, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

If you have any interest in either Poe's fiction, or weird art, this book will More...

Very good Mr Poe, very good.
Wasn't expecting too much from this as I was really only reading it as I'd never read them before. People rave about him all the time so I thought I should give him a bash. Turns out they're right! The language can sometimes be a barrier and found myself re-reading parts to understand what had been said (especially with Dupin in Murder at Rue Morgue) but the horror and dreadful excitement in all of his stories transcends the difficult language and actually grips you. More...

It was the first time I've read something from Edgar Allan Poe. I'm a fan of mystery and supernatural occurrences, so this collection was really interesting to me. Usually I get tired of the details in books, but this time it didn't happen. I was fascinated! Most of the stories were not predictable and that's a plus from me.

The collection I read consists of the following stories:
1. The Purloined Letter
2. The Murders in the Rue Morgue
3. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
4. The Pit and the P More...

Of all writers of the 19th century I don't think I have come across another, Dickens included, as appreciated and inspiring to other writers as Poe, or at least that is the impression I have gained from my own reading other the years. Copious numbers of other writers have either mentioned or quoted or referenced him at some stage or another, his influence simply cannot be ignored.
Here, then, are 11 of the most recognised of his 66 tales, including all three Auguste Dupin stories, The Fall of the More...

THE GOLD BUG (4/5)
I had expectations for this one to be more of a horror story than an adventure, but it was a fine tale nonetheless. I was surprised that Poe described all the steps (accurately) of simple substitution cipher decryption. Pretty great story.

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR (4/5)
This story was kind of creepy, and was more of what I had expected from this book. Poe ventures a little into the unknown, and ends with a somewhat grotesque finale. (view spoiler)[The man somehow suspends his life a (hide spoiler)] More...

Voted #3 of 100 best mysteries of all time by Mystery Writers of America (www.mysterywriters.org) and see also World Magazine January 12/19, 2008, pg. 27).

I wanted to like it, i really did. It's a classic. And Poe is so respectful of the reader, no dumbing down, an elevated vocabulary, stories that start off grabbing your interest from the first sentence, and each story so unique you are scrambling to figure out what is going on...

The problem is, i just had to admit, I simply don't particularly More...

This novel is a fantastic compilation of Poe's short stories. One thing this book does fantastically well is that the stories it contains are very well varied. From the more imaginative stories such as "The Sphinx" to the darker stories like "The Raven" Poe's writings will keep you captivated from the moment you open the book to the last time you close it. Overall I recommend this book to not only Poe fans, but also to anyone who enjoys horror and mystery novels.

Selalu saja, bagian favorit saia adalah cerita The Murder in the Rue Morgue, kisah pembunuhan paling briliant dan paing kejam (pembunuhan dua orang perempuan, satu digorok sampai kepalanya nyaris putus, satu lagi dijerat terus badannya dijejalkan masuk ke cerobong asap) yang dituntaskan secara cemerlang oleh detektif terkenal sepanjang masa setara dengan Holmes - Poirot : C. Auguste Dupin

Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination consist of several short stories, from Ligeria to The Black Cat to The Pit and the Pendulum.

Poe is one of my favorite authors, so I loved the book. I've read several of his short stories in high school as well as in college, and have written a couple of papers on them. My favorite story is The Fall of the House of Usher because of it's gothic setting at the house he describes.

If you are in for a good "scare," and like short stories, I would recommend this More...

The stories are wonderful, the OCR'ed formatting, not so much. It's readable, but just barely so. There are lots of odd characters populating the pages, so you kind of have to get used to ignoring stuff and translating some other stuff. But, the stories themselves are top notch classics. Rating reduced due to eBook formatting, not content of the writing.

Edgar Allen Poe isn't fun to read, but the intensity of the way he tells things is amazing. I still remember the first time I read The Tell-tale Heart in school. It's edge of your seat kind of stuff. And the way Poe chooses to say things is incredible.
I found this book for 50 cents at a used store. The tell-tale heart is still my favorite.

One who reads such a book now probably won't feel any kind of fear and, I would dare say, maybe won't be impressed at all. That's not to say that Poe isn't a good author, irrelevant, etc., not at all. My assessment is just the opposite, since many of the elements that can be found within the stories collected in this book still tap into our imagination; I would say it just so happens because Poe has laid ground for much that we see all around modern pop culture. I wonder – and that is an exercis More...

This book is one of the best books i read in the 8th grade i have read so far. This book is about a author Edgar Allan Poe who writes different story's for every one chapter. The chapters are crazy thy usually end in a sad ending or happy, but mostly sad. My favorite chapter is the first one called THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.

Poe! Illustrations by Harry Clarke are the bestest. Super-spooky. And man, is Poe variable. Some of these stories (mostly the ones you know) are exquisite and perfect and each sentence is a gem -- and some of them (mostly the ones you don't know) are just awful clunkers. For the most part, avoid Poe when he's trying to be funny.

I suppose I could say that I am "currently reading" it, because I've read a bit of "The Pit and the Pendulum". It's strange, how Poe writes about death and of dying, as if he's already been there, and returned. It's not what I'd condsider "happy, joyful" reading, but.. who wants to read that sort of stuff anyway?