The Raven / The Masque of the Red Death / The Cask of Amontillado

by Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,br/Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,br/As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--br/Only this and nothing more."br/Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.br/Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrowbr/From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--br/For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--br/Nameless here for evermore.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Thriller, Poetry, Fiction

Nook

Published November 20, 2010

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

[Nathan]

Assorted Poe.

[Tabitha]

2.5 stars - A quick Halloween-inspired read just to read The Raven.

[adi]

4/5 for The Cask of Amontillado though:)

[Sofia]

Preferred The Raven and The Cask of Amontillado to The Masque of the Red Death, but they were all good stories.

[Djeneche]

reading this book teach me something about lieying and death

[Sabrina Vosler]

I do not like the creepy atmosphere that Poe creates.

[D]

I love the Masque of the Red Death and I like the Cask of Amontillado. I didn't like the Raven though.

[Ann]

Three short classics by a master.