Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Wordsworth Editions) |
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Edgar Allan Poe
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Pages: 800 (Paperback)
ISBN: 184022052X
Pub: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Pub date: 2004-09-16
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 50919
Reader Reviews:
A mixed collection (0/2 people found this helpful)
Rating : 2.5/5
Reason for Reading : Classics Challenge, RIP Challenge, So Many Books So Little Time Challenge, Guardian Greatest Books Challenge
A collection of 73 tales and 52 poems spanning the writing career of Edgar Allan Poe. He is best known for his poem "The Raven" and tale of "The Tell-Take Heart". A favourite among gothic horror fans, I was really looking forward to reading this complete collection.
Sadly I was quite let down. There was a lot of gothic horror tales, but there were a lot of random tales as well. The ones I really enjoyed were:
The Unparalled Adventures of one Hans Pfaal (non-horror)
The Gold Bug
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Mystery of Marie Roget
The Black Cat
The Tell-Tale Heart
A Predicament
Diddling (non-horror)
Hop-Frog
William Wilson
Beatrice
The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether
Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
Eleonora
Some words with a Mummy (non-horror)
The Spectacles
This is only a list of 16 tales and out of 73 it's a pretty small proportion. I found that there were far too many I didn't enjoy between those I did which mad it very difficult to keep going and finish them all.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed the poetry and they are something I would go back and read again. I think the best thing to do is stick to a collection of his best horror ones to save being disappointed with the rest (however they do become a little formulaic after a while).
Nevermore (2/2 people found this helpful)
I've always had a liking for Edgar Allan Poe, with his tales of horror, mystery and suspense, done in the atmospheric prose of a master writer. Since I live close enough, I've even made some trips to his gravesite, a place that is always surrounded by a sense of sadness.
Poe was a tormented genius who died young, under mysterious circumstances, and at the time of his death he wasn't deservingly popular. Certainly his work was not cute romances for the masses -- he explored the darkness of the human heart, love, satire, and the earliest whodunnit stories. And "Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" brings together all of his poetry and writings in one book.
Poe's fiction writings include short stories and novellas, which tend to be rather weird -- a treasure-hunt and a golden insect, a ship caught in a whirlpool, a hypnotized man talks about the universe, and stories of despair, madness, and occasionally beauty. There is also his trilogy of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin stories, which were the first to feature a brilliant detective solving an impossible crime.
Most people know about "The Raven" (which even has the Baltimore Ravens named after it) but Poe actually wrote a lot of poetry, most of which readers never heard of. Sometimes dark, or whimsical, or even both. "By a route obscure and lonely/Haunted by ill angels only/Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT/On a black throne reigns upright..."
And, of course, the horror. This is what Poe is best known for, including such well-known stories as "The Fall Of The House Of Usher." But there are also lesser-known gems -- tales of a plague invading a party, being buried alive, a portrait that siphoned the life out of its subject, and a nightly visit to an Italian crypt leading to madness.
Don't read "Complete Stories and Poems" all at once. It's too intense. It's better to soak it in a little at a time, so that you can get a better feel for the different kinds of writing that Poe did, and how he excelled at pretty much everything he put down on paper. Most great writers can't boast of that much.
Poe's writing is what makes even his least story or poem come alive -- he brought a gothic, misty vibrancy to his stories, and could make his quiet dialogue seem utterly chilling (" "I have no name in the regions which I inhabit. I was mortal, but am fiend..."). It's not hard to see why he was an influence on authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and Franz Kafka.
"Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" is a must-have for anyone with an appreciation for great literature and beautiful, dark writing.
Quoth the raven... (10/10 people found this helpful)
I've always had a liking for Edgar Allan Poe, with his tales of horror, mystery and suspense, done in the atmospheric prose of a master writer. Since I live close enough, I've even made some trips to his gravesite, a place that is always surrounded by a sense of sadness.
Poe was a tormented genius who died young, under mysterious circumstances, and at the time of his death he wasn't deservingly popular. Certainly his work was not cute romances for the masses -- he explored the darkness of the human heart, love, satire, and the earliest whodunnit stories. And "Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" brings together all of his poetry and writings in one book.
Poe's fiction writings include short stories and novellas, which tend to be rather weird -- a treasure-hunt and a golden insect, a ship caught in a whirlpool, a hypnotized man talks about the universe, and stories of despair, madness, and occasionally beauty. There is also his trilogy of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin stories, which were the first to feature a brilliant detective solving an impossible crime.
Most people know about "The Raven" (which even has the Baltimore Ravens named after it) but Poe actually wrote a lot of poetry, most of which readers never heard of. Sometimes dark, or whimsical, or even both. "By a route obscure and lonely/Haunted by ill angels only/Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT/On a black throne reigns upright..."
And, of course, the horror. This is what Poe is best known for, including such well-known stories as "The Fall Of The House Of Usher." But there are also lesser-known gems -- tales of a plague invading a party, being buried alive, a portrait that siphoned the life out of its subject, and a nightly visit to an Italian crypt leading to madness.
Don't read "Complete Stories and Poems" all at once. It's too intense. It's better to soak it in a little at a time, so that you can get a better feel for the different kinds of writing that Poe did, and how he excelled at pretty much everything he put down on paper. Most great writers can't boast of that much.
Poe's writing is what makes even his least story or poem come alive -- he brought a gothic, misty vibrancy to his stories, and could make his quiet dialogue seem utterly chilling (" "I have no name in the regions which I inhabit. I was mortal, but am fiend..."). It's not hard to see why he was an influence on authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and Franz Kafka.
"Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" is a must-have for anyone with an appreciation for great literature and beautiful, dark writing.
Disturbing Literature. (3/7 people found this helpful)
Read troughout the world, admired by Dostojewski and tranlated by the famous French poet Baudelaire, Poe has become a legendary writer, representing the artist as a romantic failure. A lot of his stories seem a description of the frequent nightmares he had.
But his popularity and his influence on literature - even today -depend less on nightmares than on his accomplishments as a writer of fiction and as a great lyric poet.
'The fall of the House of Usher' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' show Poe's mastery of Gothic horror. His 'The Pit and the Pendulum' is a classic of horror and suspense. He invented the modern detective story with ' The Murders in the Rue Morgue '.
But he was also a great poet famous for the lyrical 'To Helen' and for the incantatory rhytm of 'The Raven'.
Good compilation of Poes work (10/21 people found this helpful)
This is the best book I have encountered involving all of Poe's work. I have been reading his work for five years and never get tired of it.
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