The Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe: Second Series

by Edgar Allan Poe

NARRATIVE OF A. GOXDON For 13
NOTE 186
MISCELLANIES.
THE SYSTEM OF DR. TARR AND PROFESSOR PETHER 1'Jl
THE LITERARY LIFE OF THINGUM BOB, ESQ 210
How TO WRITE A BLACKWOOD ARTICLE 230
A PREDICAMENT 241
MYSTIFICATION 251
X-ING A PARAGRAB 260
DIDDLING CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE EXACT SCIENCES 267
THE ANGEL OF THE ODD 278
MELLONTA TAUTA. 288
Loss OF BREATH 302
THE MAN THAT WAS USED UP 315
THE BUSINESS MAN 3'.'6
THE LANDSCAPE GARDEN 336
MAELZEL'S CHESS PLAYER 34*5
POWER OF WORDS 371
THE COLLOQUY OF MONUS AND UNA 376
THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION 386
SHADOW 392
SILENCE 395
PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE 399
A TALE OF JERUSALEM 406
THE SPHINX 411
THE MAN OF THE CROWD 416
NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD 426
Tnou ABT THE MAN 436
HOP-FROG 451
FOUR BEASTS IN ONE ; THE HOMO-CAMELEOPARD 461
WHY THE LITTTE FRENCHMAN WEARS HIS HAND IN A SLING 46!
BON BON 475
SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY. 493
KEVIEW OF STEPHENS' s ARABIA PETR^EA 509
MAGAZINE WRITING. PETER SNOOK 528
THE QUACKS OF HELICON A SATIRE 540
ASTORIA.., . . 551

578 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

The 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...