Selected Tales

by Edgar Allan Poe

Other authorsJulian Symons (Editor)

Paperback, 1980

Status

Available

Call number

813.3

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Oxford University Press, USA (1980), Paperback, 450 pages

Description

Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction, and as the inventor of the modern mystery, Poe created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new selection of twenty-four tales 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.

User reviews

LibraryThing member vixen666

All the classic short stories... beautiful prose, horrific events. Perfect.

4 more

LibraryThing member defrog

It’s Poe, so you know the deal. As usual, the horror stories are the best. And credit to Poe for inventing the detective genre with Murders in The Rue Morgue, though the other two stories with the detective Dupin “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” and “The Purloined Letter” come across like

Poe trying to show you how intellectual he is.

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LibraryThing member isabelx

And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the

wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. from "The Pit and the Pendulum"

This book includes some of Poe's most famous tales, such as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Read Death and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Some of the stories are really atmospheric, but others had me wondering whether he was ever going to finish lecturing me and start telling the story. There was one story that seemed totally out of place amongst the horror and revenant corpses, and that was "How to Write a Blackwood Article", a satirical tale about a woman being taught how to write sensational magazine articles such as those published in Blackwood's magazine.

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LibraryThing member SuzOls

Edgar Allen Poe spent the first three years of his life watching his mother die eight times a week. Perhaps this can account for the persistent macabre of his writing. His mother was an actress, he was an only child. His father had abandoned them - and by the time he was three years old his mother

died for real. She died of consumption - a rather common ailment in Poe's life. In fact it seemed most women he became close to tended to die of it. For example - his adopted mother died of consumption and his wife died of consumption. The only other principle womanly/motherly figure in his life did not die of consumption, but of a brain tumor - only shortly after he had become close to her.
His life had a profound effect on him. Each story you read seems somehow a bit more morbid and horrifying then the last.
I cannot profess a love for Edgar Allen Poe stories, but I do admit fascination. Personally I look to books as a refuge from a life full of suffering. Thus, in my opinion - his stories of horror and fascination with going insane do not provide the most pleasant of sanctums. However if you enjoy the thrill of entering the mind of a man going mad, and find the pleasure in escaping his troubled world worth the pain of experiencing it - then I would highly recommend you try him out.
Wether you hate poe or love him everyone must admit that he was good at what he did. Master of imagery and genius of controlling your emotion - he not only commanded the short story, he wrote beautiful poetry, invented the "horror" genre, invented the detective story. And his character Auguste Dupin no doubt heavily influence Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create the most memorable character of modern literature: Sherlock Holmes - but that my friends is another topic.

Edgar Allen Poe is the master of what he did,
all should try Him, though not all will like him.
You must at least respect his genius and feel a mite of pity.

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LibraryThing member murderbydeath

I picked up this tome several months ago with no intention of ever reading the whole thing - I'm not a fan of horror and after the required reading of The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado in high school, I knew that while Poe might have been brilliant he was also tapped into a very scary

place in his soul.

But he's also the father of the murder mystery and I had never read any of his Dupin stories. Doyle was supposed to have based Holmes on Dupin and given my love for Holmes it seemed remiss of me to not read Dupin. So I bought this book for a bargain price with the intention of only reading the three stories included that represented his work in the mystery genre.

I started with Murders in the Rue Morgue last night. I'll own up to my own ignorance: I really thought they took place in a morgue (yes, I know rue is French street but it's Poe and his setting a story in an actual morgue seemed obvious). The influence on Doyle's creation of Holmes is immediately and unarguably apparent. Even the narrator is the obvious inspiration for Watson, right down to his awed admiration of Dupin's deductive skills.

But boy howdy! does Dupin like the sound of his own voice. What Holmes would have said in 2 or 3 sentences, Dupin used 2-3 pages to expound upon. I have to admit I prefer Holmes' brevity and conciseness over Dupin's unarguable logic and detail.

I started to guess the murderer when Dupin started to point out the oddness of witness reports concerning the second voice heard right before the scene of the murder was entered. It seemed fantastic, but then I turned the page and an illustration gave the game away and proved me correct.

It is without a doubt, a brilliant piece of literature, and I'm looking forward to the other two mystery stories in the book The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Gold Bug. But Holmes remains, unapologetically, the favorite of my mind and my heart.

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