Product Description

Macabre parties in isolated castles … Gruesome bestial murders … Talking ravens, hellish black pits, innocents buried alive … Prepare to be chilled and enthralled by the haunting genius of the acknowledged master of gothic horror and suspense, Edgar Allan Poe. The stories and poems in this complete anthology probe to the depths of the human psyche and include the infamous – and arguably the first ever – detective story ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’; the disturbing classic, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and the horrifyingly claustrophobic, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’. The perfect bedtime read – for the daring and the brave …

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56972 in Books
• Published on: 1982-10-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1040 pages

Customer Reviews

A reasonably concise compilation of Poe's works.
Despite the title, this volume is not a complete collection of Poe's tales or poems, although *most* of them are present. His essays, reviews and miscellania are almost completely absent. There is no introduction, no notes and nothing in the way of commentary. The absence of this latter can make reading difficult, as Poe made frequent use of French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew quotations, and also employed obscure and unfamiliar words and mythological allusions. However, the stories and poems are presented in a logical order, those with similar themes being clustered together.

There are other compilations of Poe available (with lower prices) which contain basically the same material. This book is not of exceptional quality; the print used (at least in my copy) smudges, and the text contains a number of printing errors.

On the quality of Poe's fiction itself (rather than this particular volume) he cannot be faulted. A true master of every literary style to which he turned his hand, Poe elevated the short story to an artform and even created the detective fiction genre. Many writers since owe him a huge debt.

A surprising lesson from a well known poet
I did not know what to expect from this book, but I was pleasantly surprised and pleased of this choice of bed time reading. Edgar Allan Poe is one of the world's most famous scarey poets, though only a few of his works are well known. This book sensibly places his famous poem 'The Raven', at the beginning of the poetry section, to entice the reader onwards, which you will not be able to stop yourself from doing. It does the writer great justice, by bringing together his complete works and allowing the reader to be able to take in all of his tales and poems, not just to allow you to go over the well known ones again and again. This book is perfect for those who would like to read poetry, but who find the lovey dovey stuff a bit too much. Poe famously takes poetry and story telling to a new level for his time and is even considered terrifying in some ways now. These frightening tales of woe and horror and poems of murder and science fiction will keep even the most negative lover of literature amused for hours on end.

The complete works of edgar allen poe
A good quality book, recieved quickly from seller. A good read, written very differently to the books i usually read but enjoyed nonetheless