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Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
A complete collection of Poe's short stories with marginal notes and interpretations.
685 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1986
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
10.6k books29.6k 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
May 16, 2026
Yup. This is just what it says on the cover, and awesome. If you want a near-complete collection of Poe’s short stories combined with very enlightening commentary, this is the one stop shop you’ve been looking for. The only thing that might be a slight drawback is that some of Poe’s more obscure short fiction are not included, perhaps because they does not fit the criteria for a “tale” (something the editors acknowlege in their introduction).
December 4, 2012
I am now an official Poe fan! My favorite story was "The Black Cat," it made me cringe and I couldn't put it down. It was also very nice to have the side notes for the stories that I've read before and gain an insight into the writings of Poe. I loved it!
September 17, 2021
MS Found in a Bottle: Masterpiece of sustained horror, easy to see why his career was launched in earnest by its winning a contest.
Morella is rife with allusive phrases which impedes the comprehension of what is going on. A degree of redundancy is no help.
(to be continued)
Morella is rife with allusive phrases which impedes the comprehension of what is going on. A degree of redundancy is no help.
(to be continued)
July 15, 2008
I'm not sure when I started this, or when I will finish it all, but I know it will be worth the wait.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews