Product Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18485 in Books
• Published on: 1966-11-18
• Released on: 1984-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 832 pages

From the Publisher
This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history.

From the Inside Flap
This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary history.

Customer Reviews

Review for book, not contents of book.
I think Peo's genius hardly needs discussion on this forum.
So, I offer a small review on the physical book itself.

As another reviewer mentioned, there are no annotations.
You will have to translate (or find on the Net) the Latin,
the French, etc., yourself, though you can skip them and
still understand the story. I'm no Poe scholar, so I don't
know which works, if any, were excluded from the book, but
all of my favorites are here ("The Tell Tale Heart," "The
Fall of the House of Usher," "The Raven," etc.) and several
more that I've never heard of until now.

This is a solid volume, containing some of the best short
stories ever written in English and I've enjoyed reading
them immensely.

5 out of 5.

Deep into the psyche
The horror of being; the darkest depths of man's soul; the deepest fears brought about by darkness: it's all here. This is the work of the original genius of terror. And the most terrifying thing about Poe's stories and poems is that the threat doesn't come from a monster, or a devil, or a murderer: it comes from inside yourself, from your mind and your heart. There's no escaping them. Poe is not, of course a "terror" writer. He's just a writer, and one of the best there has been. His work can not be confined to a "genre". His tales touch horror, but there are some analytical, metaphysical, futurists, and tales of love (strange love, but love).

As correctly pointed out by other reviewers, Poe practically invented the mystery tale in which the detective is an amateur who solves the problem through reason and deduction alone ("The crimes of the Rue Morgue"). A wonderful cryptic and deductive tale is "The golden bug". "The cask of Amontillado" is a masterpiece of cruel vengeance. "The pit and the pendulum" is pure terror, like "The black cat".

The poems have even more variety. You know what the famous ones are: The Raven, The bells, Annabel Lee. Here, the most remarkable characteristics are music and rhythm. "Quoth the raven: nevermore!", and the ringing of the bells, the bells, bells, bells, etc. My personal favorite is Annabel Lee, but there are many other, less known, which are just excellent.

Poe was a troubled man, addicted to drugs and alcohol, who died in a miserable way (some thugs made him drink to use him in an electoral fraud; he died from drunkness on the streets of Baltimore). But his intellect and sensibility (hypersensibility) made him a true genius, a profound connoiseur of the human soul, up and down. His writing is superb and he will remain as a master of literature for centuries to come. In case you have never approached his work, do so now. Choose your favorite couch; wait until everybody is asleep, get yourself a good drink, and travel to the bottom of your own soul.

IIlimitable Dominion of American Literature
Having never written a full novel, Poe is sometimes forgotten when the great fiction writers of American history are listed. The power of Poe's dark vision, though, is virtually unprecedented in world literature. The manifestation of such deep, intuitive symbols and archetypes, ones of such clarity, prophesy and terror that even his incredible craftsmanship in language becomes transparant, is a gift given to only the most blessed and tormented of writers. To read a story like the Masque of the Red Death is to be flung into an allegorical morality play which fits perfectly into the modern context. Poe's stories and poems travel through time and rap ceaselessy on the window of your conscious thoughts. An ominous pall of expectation and retribution permeates all of his work. To pick up Poe is really never to put it down.