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The Telltale Heart and the Fall of the House of Usher
EVERYMAN'S POETRY LIBRARY: This new series of the world's greatest poetry features the hallmarks of Everyman Classics: top-quality production and reader-friendly design along with helpful notes and critiques. Each edition is also a great value, especially for those readers beginning to explore the work of this remarkable poet.
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Published January 1, 1977
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 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 6, 2017
Why does he need to kill the old man? Because of that one eye. This was one I remember opening to as a young child, and the story absolutely captivated me. The power and persistence of a guilty conscience can never be shaken.
September 1, 2019
CURRICULUM: RR/Classics (Tell Tale Heart is a short story rec from RR)
October 14, 2020
Loved this...my heart was racing!
February 15, 2021
I love how vividly edgar allen poe brings together a story in so little time.
October 31, 2022
Poe is the master of early horror
February 18, 2023
read for school
song: insane ~ black gryph0n and baasik
hide and seek ~ lizz robinet
song: insane ~ black gryph0n and baasik
hide and seek ~ lizz robinet
July 19, 2024
Classic Poe. Nothing more (or less) to say about it.
September 23, 2016
the tell tale heart was creepy. it was the story of a mad man and an old man. the old mans eye had something wrong with it. to the mad mad it was an eye that would curse him. so what does he do? he does the logical thing. he watches and smothers the old man. the mad man chopped the old man up in a tub so that no blood would hit the floor.
now when he was hiding the body he put it under the floorboards. the cops came and had tea with the mad man. the mad man heard something. he heard the heart. it was beating. at least in his head. he was descending into madness. so he tore up the floorboards and confessed to the crime.
now when he was hiding the body he put it under the floorboards. the cops came and had tea with the mad man. the mad man heard something. he heard the heart. it was beating. at least in his head. he was descending into madness. so he tore up the floorboards and confessed to the crime.
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October 10, 2017I thought it was pretty creepy with all his words he had spoke with anger loss and with his insane ending saying to the police the old man he murderd and beheadedthe old man because of the eye and his mind hearing the heart beat.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews