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Tales of Horror and Suspense
This hair-raising collection includes eight of Edgar Allan Poe’s most ingenious and gripping tales, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," concerning a most unnerving visit to the home of an old friend; "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the narrator just can’t stand the way an old man looks at him; "William Wilson," a haunting allegory about a split personality; "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the grandfather of all modern detective fiction, featuring a sleuth even cleverer than Sherlock Holmes; and four other riveting "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Gold-Bug," and "The Purloined Letter."
Lovers of strange and mind-bending fiction will delight in these classic, spine-tingling tales by one of the great writers of horror fiction.
Lovers of strange and mind-bending fiction will delight in these classic, spine-tingling tales by one of the great writers of horror fiction.
192 pages, Paperback
Published October 20, 2011
3 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,894 books28.6k followersThe name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 17, 2021
This is a mostly good book with some of the more suspenseful tales from Poe's canon.
Those of you looking for 'The Raven' please look elsewhere, but if you want 'Murder at Rue Morgue' you have come to the right place.
Despite the fact that Poe was a genius, I did not give this book a higher score because some of the story choices were a bit odd. Some of the stories contain language almost impossible to understand, and choosing different stories better suited to a modern reader would have been a much better inclusion.
All in all a mostly worthwhile selection of tales if you can look past the one or two more challenging ones.
Those of you looking for 'The Raven' please look elsewhere, but if you want 'Murder at Rue Morgue' you have come to the right place.
Despite the fact that Poe was a genius, I did not give this book a higher score because some of the story choices were a bit odd. Some of the stories contain language almost impossible to understand, and choosing different stories better suited to a modern reader would have been a much better inclusion.
All in all a mostly worthwhile selection of tales if you can look past the one or two more challenging ones.
November 24, 2013
Some of the short stories contained in this volume, I REALLY liked and enjoyed. "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Cask of Amontillado" and "William Wilson" are three that come to mind. However, I found "The Gold Bug" tedious. It took me quite a number of nights of reading just before I went to sleep to get through that one...It kept putting me TO SLEEP.
The way the English language is used has changed since Poe's day. I found it tedious and difficult to get through some of the stories because of the convoluted language. With some of the stories, I was able to disregard that problem because the story was riveting. But in other stories, it was difficult to keep enough interest to stay on the task of finishing.
The way the English language is used has changed since Poe's day. I found it tedious and difficult to get through some of the stories because of the convoluted language. With some of the stories, I was able to disregard that problem because the story was riveting. But in other stories, it was difficult to keep enough interest to stay on the task of finishing.
December 7, 2011
Not only have Poe's stories given the basic fundamentals for the real horror and suspense stories, but also they have given important policiable and detective devices which are used in renown novels and stories like the Sherlock Holmes' ones.
I could understand the main plots even though it was difficult because of the authour's language management.
I hope to read them again in a future so I will remember Dupin's reasoning about ingenuity, analysis and admeasuring as well as having the right observation.
I could understand the main plots even though it was difficult because of the authour's language management.
I hope to read them again in a future so I will remember Dupin's reasoning about ingenuity, analysis and admeasuring as well as having the right observation.
December 17, 2015
I'm a HUGE Poe fan, so this was such a treat!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews