Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Terror and Madness

Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Terror and Madness

by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Terror and Madness

Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Terror and Madness

by Edgar Allan Poe

Hardcover

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Overview

“There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”
 
Edgar Allan Poe wrote the passage above to describe the interior décor of Prince Prospero’s castle in “The Masque of the Red Death,” but he might just as easily have written it to describe the contents of this book. Its nineteen stories abound with characters—among them gibbering madmen, ominous doppelgängers, walled-up victims, and living-dead corpses—whose experiences are colored by the emotional responses Poe hoped to evoke.
Consider, if you will, the following tales of terror and madness:
 
The Fall of the House of Usher. The melancholy House of Usher was a crumbling pile whose sad decline was but a mirror of its family’s psychic state.
 
The Masque of the Red Death. The pestilence came like a thief in the night, and Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
 
The Tell-Tale Heart. The murderer protested that he wasn’t mad. His gruesome crime proved otherwise.
 
The Black Cat. Murder will out, as a consequence of what’s been walled in.
 
The Premature Burial. There are certain themes of which the interest is all absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. Or are they?
 
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. A mesmeric trance forestalled the worst ravages of the patient’s death—but it could do so only for so long.
 
The Cask of Amontillado. The unthinkable fate that awaited Fortunato in the nitre-crusted catacombs beneath the river’s bed only proved that he was the most ill-named of victims.
 
Hop-Frog. The last jest of the man in motley was hideous—and truly no laughing matter.
 
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. A stowaway’s lot is never an easy one, especially when shipwreck, cannibalism, and the imminent threat of death shape it.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781435170957
Publisher: Fall River Press
Publication date: 03/31/2020
Series: Retro Classics
Pages: 440
Sales rank: 257,243
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was orphaned at the age of three and adopted by a wealthy Virginia family with whom he had a troubled relationship. He excelled in his studies of language and literature at school, and self-published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827. In 1830, Poe embarked on a career as a writer and began contributing reviews and essays to popular periodicals. He also wrote sketches and short fiction, and in 1833 published his only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Over the next five years he established himself as a master of the short story form through the publication of "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and other well–known works. In 1841, he wrote "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," generally considered the first modern detective story. The publication of The Raven and Other Poems in 1845 brought him additional fame as a poet.
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