Selected Tales
Edgar Allan Poe, David Van Leer
3.82(614 readers)
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by David Van Leer
Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of horror and detective fiction.
As well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Using the Gothic to question the integrity of human existence, Poe is less interested in moral retribution than in exposing the misconceptions that make things seem 'mysterious' in the first place. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new critical edition selects twenty-four tales and places the most popular — 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Masque of the Red Death', 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', and 'The Purloined Letter ' — alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays, and political satires.
• INTRODUCTION • TEXTUAL NOTE • BIBLIOGRAPHY • CHRONOLOGY • EXPLANATORY NOTES
--back cover
MS. Found in a Ik)ttle
Berenice
Morella
Ligeia
The Man that was Used Up
The Fall ofthe House of Usher
William Wilson
The Man of the Crowd
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Eleonora
The Masque of the Red Death
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Mystery of Marie Roget
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Gold-Bug
The Black
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
The Purloined Letter
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
The Imp of the Perverse
The Cask of Amontillado
The Domain of Arnheim
Hop-Frog
Von Kempelen and his
Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of horror and detective fiction.
As well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Using the Gothic to question the integrity of human existence, Poe is less interested in moral retribution than in exposing the misconceptions that make things seem 'mysterious' in the first place. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new critical edition selects twenty-four tales and places the most popular — 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Masque of the Red Death', 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', and 'The Purloined Letter ' — alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays, and political satires.
• INTRODUCTION • TEXTUAL NOTE • BIBLIOGRAPHY • CHRONOLOGY • EXPLANATORY NOTES
--back cover
MS. Found in a Ik)ttle
Berenice
Morella
Ligeia
The Man that was Used Up
The Fall ofthe House of Usher
William Wilson
The Man of the Crowd
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Eleonora
The Masque of the Red Death
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Mystery of Marie Roget
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Gold-Bug
The Black
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
The Purloined Letter
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
The Imp of the Perverse
The Cask of Amontillado
The Domain of Arnheim
Hop-Frog
Von Kempelen and his
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Publication Date
1/1/1998
ISBN
9780192832245
Pages
338
Categories
About the Author
Edgar Allan Poe
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...
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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