Six Tales Of Mystery And Imagination

by Edgar Allan Poe

The ghost stories, the detective mysteries and the horror stories of Edgar Allen Poe stunned and captivated readers when they first appeared and have done so ever since. In "The Pit and the Pendulum" the suspense is near unbearable as the terrible methods of the Spanish Inquisition are revealed, and the description of the ghostliness of "The House of Usher" is only surpassed by the climax of the story.

Genres: Fiction, Classics

187 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1986

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...

Reviews

[Alisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

My 3 star rating is more for the book itself rather than the collection of short stories within. I thought the order of the stories was a little odd, espectially since "Murder at the Rue Morgue" was placed several stories after "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (aka the sequel to Rue Morgue), and I ended up reading them out of order.

As far as the stories:
The Gold Bug - Not a fan of the mystery or strangeness presented in this story anyway, so it doesn't help that it didn't age well/ is really kinda super racist. In fact, the only moment I kind of like where the main characters have to solve a puzzle, is marred by some serious racism that I feel would have been problematic even for the time this story was writen. I was bummed that this is the story that started off the collection.
The Oblong Box - Hadn't read this before and ended up seeing the mystery a mile away, but still enjoyable. However, if I remember correctly, it still had a little bit of racism and antisemitism, which was a disappointment since it came after the Gold Bug.
The Myster of Marie Roget - Hadn't read this before either, but it's an C. Auguste Dupin story (aka the first detective story and inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, etc.). I like it to a certian degree, but I feel like I've read enough subsequent detective stories that are stronger, so this one was kind of eh. Interesting to read, but nothing to write home about.
Th Fall of the House of Usher - a solid Poe classic
The Murder at the Rue Morgue - the original Auguste Dupin story. I had read this years ago and liked it more this go around (although I still noticed the things that caused me to not like it the first time). It's interesting to read the foundation on which subsequent detective stories were built.
The Pit and the Pendulum - I love this story. It's not historically accurate but who cares? The psychological torture/terror conveyed here is exactly what I want when I read a Poe short story so for me this was a strong way to end a collection that was otherwise just okay.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some were good, some not so much.
I found the way of speaking hard to follow.