Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Poems Tales Criticism

by Edgar Allan Poe

Overview

The classic poems and spine-tingling stories of an American gothic master collected in one volume

Of all the American writers, Edgar Allan Poe staked out perhaps the most unique and vivid reputation as a master of the macabre. Even today, in the age of horror movies and high-tech haunted houses, Poe remains the first choice of entertainment for many who want a spine-chilling thrill.

Born in Boston in 1809, and dead at the age of forty, Poe wrote across several fields during his life and was noted for his poetry and short stories as well as his criticism. The best of each of these is collected here, including the classic poem “The Raven,” and beloved stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In his introduction to this volume, G. R. Thompson argues that Poe was a great satirist and comedic craftsman, as well as a formidable Gothic writer. “All of Poe’s fiction,” Thompson writes, “and the poems as well, can be seen as one coherent piece—as the work of one of the greatest ironists of world literature.”

Great Short Works of Edgar Allen Poe includes some of these classics:

• The Raven
• Annabel Lee
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue
• The Masque of the Red Death
• The Pit and the Pendulum
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• The Purloined Letter
• The Imp of the Perverse

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060727857
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/28/2004
Series:	Perennial Classics
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.92(d)
Lexile:	1310L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) reigned unrivaled in his mastery of mystery during his lifetime and is now widely held to be a central figure of Romanticism and gothic horror in American literature. Born in Boston, he was orphaned at age three, was expelled from West Point for gambling, and later became a well-regarded literary critic and editor. The Raven, published in 1845, made Poe famous. He died in 1849 under what remain mysterious circumstances and is buried in Baltimore, Maryland.

Read an Excerpt

Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Poems Tales Criticism

Chapter One

Poems

DREAMS

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awak'ning till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow:
Yes! tho' that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
'Twere better than the dull reality
Of waking life to him whose heart shall be,
And bath been ever, on the chilly earth,
A chaos of deep passion from his birth!

But should it be-that dream eternally
Continuing-as dreams have been to me
In my young boyhood--should it thus be given,
'Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven!
For I have revell'd, when the sun was bright
In the summer sky; in dreamy fields of light,
And left unbeedingly my very heart
In climes of mine imagining--apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine own thought--wbat more could I have seen?

'Twas once and only once and the wild hour
From my remembrance shall not pass-some power
Or spell had bound me-'twas the chilly wind
Came o'er me in the night and left behind
Its image on my spirit, or the moon
Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
Too coldly-or the stars-howe'er it was
That dream was as that night wind-let it pass.

I have been bappy--tbo' but in a dream.
I have been happy--and I love the theme --
Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life-
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

Of semblance with reality which brings
To the delirious eye more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love-and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

[1827, 1828]

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

I

Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tomb-stone--
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy:

II

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness-for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are -again
In death around thee-and their will
Shall overshadow thee: be still.

III

The night-tho' clear--shall frown
And the stars shall look not down,
From their high thrones in the heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever.

IV

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish
Now are visions ne'er to vanish
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more-like dew-drop from the grass.

V

The breeze---the breath of God-is still-
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy-shadowy-yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token-
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!--
[1827, 1839]

EVENING STAR

'Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro' the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
'Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens
Her beam on the waves.
I gaz'd awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold-too cold for me-
There pass'd, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turn'd away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heav'n at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light.
[1827]

Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Poems Tales Criticism. Copyright © by Edgar Poe. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

	Sources and Acknowledgments	v
	Introduction	1
I	Poems
	Dreams (1827, 1828)	49
	Spirits of the Dead (1827, 1839)	50
	Evening Star (1827)	51
	A Dream Within a Dream (1827-1849)	52
	Stanzas: "In Youth Have I Known" (1827)	52
	A Dream (1827)	54
	"The Happiest Day-The Happiest Hour" (1827)	54
	The Lake-To- (1827, 1845)	55
	Sonnet-To Science (1829, 1845)	56
	To-: "The Bowers Whereat, In Dreams I See" (1829, 1845)	56
	Fairy-Land (1829, 1845)	57
	Introduction (1829-1831)	58
	Alone (1829)	60
	To Helen (1831, 1845)	61
	Israfel (1831-1845)	62
	The City in the Sea (1831-1845)	63
	The Sleeper (1831, 1849)	65
	The Valley of Unrest (1831-1845)	67
	Lenore (1831-1843)	68
	To One in Paradise (1833-1849)	148
	The Coliseum (1833, 1850)	69
	The Haunted Palace (1838-1848)	226
	Sonnet-Silence (1839-1845)	71
	The Conqueror Worm (1842-1849)	182
	Dream-Land (1844-1849)	71
	The Raven (1845-1849)	73
	Ulalume-A Ballad (1847-1849)	78
	The Bells (1849)	81
	Eldorado (1849)	84
	For Annie (1849)	85
	Annabel Lee (1849)	88
II	Tales
	Metzengerstein. A Tale in Imitation of the German (1832, 1836)	93
	Loss of Breath. A Tale A La Blackwood (1832, 1835)	104
	MS. Found in a Bottle (1833, 1845)	125
	The Assignation [The Visionary] (1834, 1845)	138
	Berenice (1835, 1845)	152
	Some Passages from the Life of a Lion [Lionizing] (1832, 1845)	162
	Shadow-A Parable (1835, 1845)	168
	Silence-A Fable (1837, 1845)	171
	Ligeia (1838, 1845)	175
	How to Write a Blackwood Article. A Predicament (1838, 1845)	193
	The Fall of the House of Usher (1839, 1845)	216
	William Wilson (1839, 1845)	238
	The Man of the Crowd (1840, 1845)	262
	The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841, 1845)	272
	A Descent Into the Maelstrom (1841, 1845)	313
	The Colloquy of Monos and Una (1841, 1845)	333
	Never Bet the Devil Your Head. A Tale with a Moral (1841, 1845)	344
	The Oval Portrait (1842, 1845)	355
	The Masque of the Red Death (1842, 1845)	359
	The Pit and the Pendulum (1842, 1845)	366
	The Tell-Tale Heart (1843, 1845)	384
	The Black Cat (1843, 1845)	390
	A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844, 1845)	401
	The Premature Burial (1844, 1845)	413
	The Purloined Letter (1844, 1845)	430
	Some Words with a Mummy (1845)	452
	The Imp of the Perverse (1845, 1846)	472
	The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)	479
	The Sphinx (1846)	490
	The Cask of Amontillado (1846)	496
	Hop-Frog: or, The Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs (1849)	504
III	Criticism
	Review of "Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne" (1842)	519
	The Philosophy of Composition (1846)	528
	Excerpts from The Poetic Principle (1848-1850)	542
	Bibliography	553
	Chronology	559