Edgar Allan Poe is certainly one of America's greatest and most underrated writers; perhaps underrated because he's too easily pigeon-holed as a drug-addled horror writer. In fact, he virtually created the modern mystery tale, wrote excellent poetry & many of the images from his horror stories have passed into the iconography of our culture--recall the Tell Tale Heart episode of Cheers, with Diane following Carla around going, boom--boom, boom-boom,.... One of the beauties of Poe is that, since his work was all poetry & short stories, you can get everything in a one volume addition like this one. I'll just look at a couple of examples: The Murders in the Rue Morgue: With this tale, Poe created the detective story. The narrator
is a friend of C. Auguste Dupin in earl 1800's Paris. Dupin is gifted
with a great intellect & comes of an illustrious family, but has been
reduced to poverty and has shrunken into indolence. However, reading about
a particularly brutal murder in Rue Morgue, he is stirred into action &
he & the narrator set out to solve the
All of the elements that have become so familiar to us are present here; a locked room, a bizarre killing, a brilliant but eccentric detective, an incredulous sidekick, bumbling police, etc.. Most important, the crime is solved by the rigorous application of reason. In Dupin we see the forerunner of everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Nero Wolfe. The Cask of Amantillado: The story is off & running from the first paragraph: THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could,
He had a weak point --this Fortunato --although in other regards
Taking off from this brisk setup, Poe treats us to one of the really diabolical tales of vengeance in all of literature. This one will trouble your sleep. And, of course, your teacher taught you poetry by reading your class The Bells, The Raven and Annabel Lee. I bet you still remember learning the word tintinnabulation. They're all here & they're all just as morbid and scary as you remember them. (Reviewed:) Grade: (A+) Tweet Websites:-WIKIPEDIA: Edgar Allan Poe -AUDIO STORY: The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast, 25 October 2024) -AUDIO: The Case of the Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe (Classic Detective Stories, John Anthony Walker, 26 October 2024) - -ANNOTATED ETEXT: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe: Annotated: Poe’s 1841 story, considered the first detective fiction, contains many tropes now considered standard to the genre, including a brilliant, amateur detective. (Liz Tracey, January 18, 2023, daily jStor) -ESSAY: Poe Man’s Immortality: The great author lives on in comic books, cartoons, and wherever dark secrets of the human heart are written. (Edward Lawrence, September/October 2008, Humanities) -ESSAY: Walking in the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin (Ian Fong) -ESSAY: In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tamerlane: Bradford Morrow on the Bibliophile’s Holy Grail, Otherwise Known as the “Black Tulip” ((Bradford Morrow, June 25, 2024, LitHub) -ESSAY: On Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” (“Commentary on Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher,” from The House of Fiction, edited by Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate) -ESSAY: EDGAR ALLAN POE'S BID TO BECOME A REAL-LIFE CRIME SOLVER: Having created a popular fictional detective, Poe set out to apply his theories of reason to the day's biggest mysteries. (ALEX HORTIS, 3/05/24, CrimeReads) -ESSAY: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” & Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (Sean Fitzpatrick, April 19th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative) -ESSAY: Edgar Allan Poe’s Literary War (Harry Lee Poe, October 6th, 2024, Imaginative Conservative) - -ESSAY: WHY DOES THE MYSTERY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE'S DEATH STILL HAUNT US? Few American writers have been read so widely for so long. And for many, Poe's death is inextricable from his fiction. (MARK DAWIDZIAK, 2/14/23, Crime Reads) -ESSAY: THE STRANGE REAL-LIFE MYSTERY BEHIND EDGAR ALLAN POE'S "THE BLACK CAT": Fact meets fiction in Poe’s classic story of a murderer (DEAN JOBB, 2/13/23, CrimeReads) -ESSAY: The Enduring Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Macabre Death (Nick Kolakowski, 12/08/22, MSN) -INTERVIEW: HOW EDGAR ALLAN POE REINVENTED AMERICAN LITERATURE – AND SCIENCE WRITING: John Tresch: "In that lurid myth, in those shocking images, that's where the field of experimentation for future literature lives." (LISA LEVY, 12/03/22, Crime Reads) -ESSAY: Edgar Allan Poe & the Mask of the 20th Century (David Gosselin, January 18th, 2022, Imaginative Conservative) -ESSAY: poe boy: The ongoing impact of Edgar Allan Poe (SUDIPTO SANYAL, 10/28/2021, The Smart Set) - -REVIEW ESSAY: “The Fearful Colored into the Horrible”: Edgar Allan Poe and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Carlos Acevedo, October 28, 2022, City Journal) -ESSAY: The Devil in Poe (CASEY CHALK, October 2021, Crisis) -The Last Haunting of Edgar Allan Poe (The Beale Papers) -REVIEW: of A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe By Mark Dawidziak (Bob Duffy, Washington Independent Review of Books) -REVIEW: of In Poe’s Wake: Travels in the Graphic and the Atmospheric By Jonathan Elmer (Jethro K. Lieberman, Washington Independent Review of Books) -REVIEW: of FALLEN ANGEL: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, by Robert Morgan (mark Jarman, hudson Review) - Book-related and General Links: Read etext versions of some of the Stories & Poems: -Annabel Lee (1849) -The Bell (1849) -The Cask of Amantillado (1846) -The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) -Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) -The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) -The Raven (1845) -The Tell Tale Heart (1843) WEBSITES:
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