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Edgar Allan Poe Unabr Ed Pb
Under-appreciated in his own time, Poe's unique genius for exploring the darker corridors of the human imagination raised nightmares to the level of art. This collection includes poetry and prose, including "The Conqueror Worm", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", and "The Pit and the Pendulum". 1,186 pp.
1184 pages, Paperback
Published October 9, 1983
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,663 books26.6k followersThe name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
June 22, 2020
When choosing which single volume of Poe's to keep in my collection I settled on this one. I decided against the Library of America edition of the tales due to conspicuous absences in the Table of Contents. This one has all of my favorite poems, stories and a few essays. I supplemented this with the LOA edition of his Reviews and the Delphi Complete Works ebook edition, chiefly for the letters. You would be hard-pressed to find a more delightful volume of Poe than this one, even if it is missing a few gems (like Eureka). It has pretty much all of my favorites.
He was the kind of author I will reread for life. I rarely grow tired of his semi-Gothic prose and lyrical poetry. Ever since reading Tell-Tale Heart, Pit and the Pendulum, Cask of Amontillado in middle school, I've cherished this large tome for the wealth of memories attached to it. I remember reading Pym and being amazed (in high school) and rereading The Raven a hundred times in an abortive attempt to memorize it. Most charming of all, perhaps, are the illustrations in this omnibus. If only LOA would take their work more seriously, stop leaving out key works from their authors and invest in illustrated pages. These editions from this publisher may be getting hard to find, but I also picked up their first volume of Twain as well.
If you are debating about reading Poe, do yourself the favor of reading his Complete Tales, in any form - even ebook - and if you can afford it, stick this one on your shelf.
He was the kind of author I will reread for life. I rarely grow tired of his semi-Gothic prose and lyrical poetry. Ever since reading Tell-Tale Heart, Pit and the Pendulum, Cask of Amontillado in middle school, I've cherished this large tome for the wealth of memories attached to it. I remember reading Pym and being amazed (in high school) and rereading The Raven a hundred times in an abortive attempt to memorize it. Most charming of all, perhaps, are the illustrations in this omnibus. If only LOA would take their work more seriously, stop leaving out key works from their authors and invest in illustrated pages. These editions from this publisher may be getting hard to find, but I also picked up their first volume of Twain as well.
If you are debating about reading Poe, do yourself the favor of reading his Complete Tales, in any form - even ebook - and if you can afford it, stick this one on your shelf.
Read
December 8, 2015Poe. Poe. Poe.
I think maybe for the reader, the average reader who thinks of herself as A Reader, there’s really no reason to not read some Complete-ish edition of Poe’s work. You’ll cheat yourself if you are satisfied with a Best Of Poe. Because there is definitely Poe’s Best (however they may be counted) and there is secondary Poe. And his Complete Works, unlike that of, say, a Melville, is a mere 1178 pages. Scarcely a novel’s length. This particular edition I had on hand, this unabridged edition, may or may not contain every word Poe ever uttered and it may or may not be in some sense an abridgment, but it is certainly most of it, which is what counts. And too, it’s arranged chronologically, which is pretty cool.
Least favorites :: pretty much all of the pretty poetry (which is totally a thing on me, not on Poe). And the landscape stuff ; but I have the same hang=up with Vollmann too.
Most favorite :: with a tip of the hat to The Significant whose favorite Poe it is and who waited with patience until Poe’s chronology brought me to it last night, last night of Poe’ing, “Hop-Frog”. Because it’s a nice piece of proletarian fiction. [and most of the other stuff frequently collected in Best Of’s are also excellent].
And, if you really need an excuse to read Poe, other than that he is foundational to the American Tradition of Fiction (i.e., Canon), then you’ll want to read him as preparation for the reading of Zettel’s Traum, which, if you’ve been reading the weekly updates at The Untranslated, you’ll know is rather more than a little rewarding.
Now, I’ve got to get my ass back to that stack of novels although I think it’d be cool to swim through several more of these Collected/Complete Short Stories kind of books some more.
I think maybe for the reader, the average reader who thinks of herself as A Reader, there’s really no reason to not read some Complete-ish edition of Poe’s work. You’ll cheat yourself if you are satisfied with a Best Of Poe. Because there is definitely Poe’s Best (however they may be counted) and there is secondary Poe. And his Complete Works, unlike that of, say, a Melville, is a mere 1178 pages. Scarcely a novel’s length. This particular edition I had on hand, this unabridged edition, may or may not contain every word Poe ever uttered and it may or may not be in some sense an abridgment, but it is certainly most of it, which is what counts. And too, it’s arranged chronologically, which is pretty cool.
Least favorites :: pretty much all of the pretty poetry (which is totally a thing on me, not on Poe). And the landscape stuff ; but I have the same hang=up with Vollmann too.
Most favorite :: with a tip of the hat to The Significant whose favorite Poe it is and who waited with patience until Poe’s chronology brought me to it last night, last night of Poe’ing, “Hop-Frog”. Because it’s a nice piece of proletarian fiction. [and most of the other stuff frequently collected in Best Of’s are also excellent].
And, if you really need an excuse to read Poe, other than that he is foundational to the American Tradition of Fiction (i.e., Canon), then you’ll want to read him as preparation for the reading of Zettel’s Traum, which, if you’ve been reading the weekly updates at The Untranslated, you’ll know is rather more than a little rewarding.
Now, I’ve got to get my ass back to that stack of novels although I think it’d be cool to swim through several more of these Collected/Complete Short Stories kind of books some more.
June 22, 2008
My five-star rating only applies to Poe's fiction, which was the part of the book I read ten years ago; when I decided recently to review the book, I resolved to read the poetry as well, but a couple of sessions caused me to abandon that idea! I do appreciate "The Raven," and some of Poe's other shorter, mature poems; but I'm not a big fan of Romantic poetry, and in the main, Poe's work in that form has all the besetting faults of its school: opacity, overblown verbosity and sentimentality for its own sake, an excessively self-referential quality, and a preference for style over objective substance. To me, it has more of a soporific effect than a sleeping pill; and when you have to fight sleep all the while you're reading a book, it's time to get a different book. Poe's fiction, though, is a very different matter!
A lot of popular perceptions about Poe are untrue; for example, he wrote very little supernatural fiction, and even some of that is tongue-in-cheek. That brings up another misperception: not all of his writing is grim and horrific. A fair amount of it is dryly humorous (though at times the humor is gallows humor); in that respect, he differs from the Romantic pure type, which was deadly serious. And his frequent evocation of situational horror in his writing was not the product of a distorted, morbid imagination, nor was he a deranged drug addict; though he did drink heavily at times, he was much more normal and well-adjusted than popular imagination gives him credit for, and his horrific themes were normal staples of Romantic fiction, employed by many authors of the day because of their ability to evoke strong emotion. (Poe just evokes it more effectively than most.) Nor was he an infidel; while not necessarily a Christian, he was definitely a theist and a believer in immortality, who sets forth his beliefs on these subjects in some detail in "Mesmeric Revelations." (The despair towards the idea of life after death in "The Raven" is the narrator's, not the author's, and a literary conceit for emotional effect.)
Only four of Poe's 62 short stories are mysteries (and one of those, "The Mystery of Marie Roget," is not as effective as the others, IMO) but those four essentially created the genre and established some of its basic conventions. The Dupin stories set the pattern for Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon (though the description of the crime scene in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is not for the squeamish), and "The Gold Bug" is the first and one of the best hidden treasure type mysteries, even though marred by the racially insensitive and invidiously stereotypical treatment of the slave Jupiter.
His only long fiction, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and a fair number of his stories are in the science fiction genre; his work in this mode is presented with careful "verisimilitude" and attention to cutting edge science of his day, and he found scientific concepts handy vehicles both for satiric humor and more often for horror. Some of the ideas he employs are a lunar voyage by means of a balloon, mesmerism, psychic survival of death, destruction of the earth by a comet, the world of the far future (2848), Egyptian mummification as suspended animation, and the theory of a hollow earth with openings at the poles. (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym treats this theme; and without engaging in a "spoiler," my opinion is that the ending is NOT abrupt and incomplete, but rather exactly as Poe wanted it to be for the effect he meant to create.)
Many of Poe's general fiction stories find the everyday world a source of profoundly terrifying situations: murder, insanity, premature burial, the tortures of the Inquisition, deadly epidemic disease, the life-threatening, heart-stopping experience of being sucked into a whirlpool. Stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," "Berenice," and "The Pit and the Pendulum" are some of the most powerful and unforgettable works in this vein ever penned.
A lot of popular perceptions about Poe are untrue; for example, he wrote very little supernatural fiction, and even some of that is tongue-in-cheek. That brings up another misperception: not all of his writing is grim and horrific. A fair amount of it is dryly humorous (though at times the humor is gallows humor); in that respect, he differs from the Romantic pure type, which was deadly serious. And his frequent evocation of situational horror in his writing was not the product of a distorted, morbid imagination, nor was he a deranged drug addict; though he did drink heavily at times, he was much more normal and well-adjusted than popular imagination gives him credit for, and his horrific themes were normal staples of Romantic fiction, employed by many authors of the day because of their ability to evoke strong emotion. (Poe just evokes it more effectively than most.) Nor was he an infidel; while not necessarily a Christian, he was definitely a theist and a believer in immortality, who sets forth his beliefs on these subjects in some detail in "Mesmeric Revelations." (The despair towards the idea of life after death in "The Raven" is the narrator's, not the author's, and a literary conceit for emotional effect.)
Only four of Poe's 62 short stories are mysteries (and one of those, "The Mystery of Marie Roget," is not as effective as the others, IMO) but those four essentially created the genre and established some of its basic conventions. The Dupin stories set the pattern for Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon (though the description of the crime scene in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is not for the squeamish), and "The Gold Bug" is the first and one of the best hidden treasure type mysteries, even though marred by the racially insensitive and invidiously stereotypical treatment of the slave Jupiter.
His only long fiction, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and a fair number of his stories are in the science fiction genre; his work in this mode is presented with careful "verisimilitude" and attention to cutting edge science of his day, and he found scientific concepts handy vehicles both for satiric humor and more often for horror. Some of the ideas he employs are a lunar voyage by means of a balloon, mesmerism, psychic survival of death, destruction of the earth by a comet, the world of the far future (2848), Egyptian mummification as suspended animation, and the theory of a hollow earth with openings at the poles. (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym treats this theme; and without engaging in a "spoiler," my opinion is that the ending is NOT abrupt and incomplete, but rather exactly as Poe wanted it to be for the effect he meant to create.)
Many of Poe's general fiction stories find the everyday world a source of profoundly terrifying situations: murder, insanity, premature burial, the tortures of the Inquisition, deadly epidemic disease, the life-threatening, heart-stopping experience of being sucked into a whirlpool. Stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," "Berenice," and "The Pit and the Pendulum" are some of the most powerful and unforgettable works in this vein ever penned.
June 17, 2021
Poe's stories are a hit and miss. Now, some of this is undeniably due to my own personal taste, which can not be helped, and if I were to rate all the stories individually and then average them together, this book would recieve somewhere between three to four stars, because some of his stories are awesome, others so-and-so, and a few are just pretty meh.
However, as far as a collection on a single author goes, this is an excellent book which collects Poe's poetry and short stories. If you're looking for a definitive collection of a classic author bound into one volume, this is the book for you, but be forewarned, it's a quite thick and heavy book (over 1000 pages) so it's not one of these light mass-market paperbacks that's easy to tote around.
However, if this is not an issue for you and you want a paperback version of the collection rather than the Kindle/e-book collections that can be found out there, then you definitely want to get this particular book, you will not be disappointed.
However, as far as a collection on a single author goes, this is an excellent book which collects Poe's poetry and short stories. If you're looking for a definitive collection of a classic author bound into one volume, this is the book for you, but be forewarned, it's a quite thick and heavy book (over 1000 pages) so it's not one of these light mass-market paperbacks that's easy to tote around.
However, if this is not an issue for you and you want a paperback version of the collection rather than the Kindle/e-book collections that can be found out there, then you definitely want to get this particular book, you will not be disappointed.
March 23, 2018
There are two things that I love most about Poe's work: his poetry and Professor Dupin.
His poetry is one of the first times I ever experienced how words can string together to form not just sounds, but musical epiphanies. His poetry was how he began his career; it's useful how this book organizes his work by date. Even though there are more poems than I can count that have influenced my love for poetry, 'A Dream Within A Dream' is the one that is the biggest inspiration.
My love for Professor Dupin stems from how Conan Doyle was so enthralled by Poe's whodunit stories, that he based Sherlock Holmes off of the professor. Many people believe that Conan Doyle was who invented the whodunit, but he wasn't. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would be Poe. Yes, Doyle's version is more polished than Poe's, but of course it would be and it has nothing to do with talent. It has to do with the fact that it's easy to improve on something that came before, but difficult to create something that breaks boundaries. Now, who did which?
This book, which I've read every other year for ten years, was a vintage copy my father had given me. It fell apart; of course, that's what vintage books do best! I couldn't part with it, though. So, I've been using it as home decor. It's the best way to not have to get rid of something that holds such good memories; recycle it.
His poetry is one of the first times I ever experienced how words can string together to form not just sounds, but musical epiphanies. His poetry was how he began his career; it's useful how this book organizes his work by date. Even though there are more poems than I can count that have influenced my love for poetry, 'A Dream Within A Dream' is the one that is the biggest inspiration.
My love for Professor Dupin stems from how Conan Doyle was so enthralled by Poe's whodunit stories, that he based Sherlock Holmes off of the professor. Many people believe that Conan Doyle was who invented the whodunit, but he wasn't. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would be Poe. Yes, Doyle's version is more polished than Poe's, but of course it would be and it has nothing to do with talent. It has to do with the fact that it's easy to improve on something that came before, but difficult to create something that breaks boundaries. Now, who did which?
This book, which I've read every other year for ten years, was a vintage copy my father had given me. It fell apart; of course, that's what vintage books do best! I couldn't part with it, though. So, I've been using it as home decor. It's the best way to not have to get rid of something that holds such good memories; recycle it.
March 4, 2023
2023.38: 30 year project (that started with a Waldenbooks gift card from my grandparents) comes to an end. What a gift!
April 29, 2010
I came out of this thick door-stopper, toe-crushing tome a fan of Poe. What would Vincent Price have done without him? What would Stephen King have done without him? "The Black Cat, " "The Cask of Amontillado," The Fall of the House of Usher," "Ligeia" "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Premature Burial" and "The Tell-Tale Heart. Spooky, creepy, and so so memorable. For that matter, not just the horror field but the mystery story owes a great debt to him. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" with Poe's great detective, C. August Dupin, predates Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes by more than four decades. (It's a debt Conan Doyle himself recognized: "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed.... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?") His only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is notable for being set in Antarctica and was an inspiration for a story by Jules Verne. There's also great, influential poetry in here as well: "Annabel Lee," "To Helen," "Lenore," "The Raven." One of the first great American writers and one of the earliest masters of the short story--and very, very readable and entertaining today.
October 28, 2016
My dad originally gave me his copy of this book, which was from his college days at Cornell University, so that I could complete an audition. The audition went poorly, and the book ended up placed on a shelf for an extended period of time. It had to sit. When I picked it back up, I became entranced by the poetry, and how each word was written and formed, which words were chosen for his prose. Edgar Allan Poe, at least to me, was the first person to have perfected the 'whodunnit', not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who stole the whodunnit from him. Poe's stories with Professor Dupin were by far my favorite parts of his short stories. When it came to poetry, however, my favorite was "A Dream Within A Dream" as that resonated the part of me which recognized his grievances. Nevertheless, this is by far one of the few writers who continuously wrote fantastic works.
February 7, 2009
I was reading Poe when my schoolmates were reading Dr. Seuss.
My copy of this book is so well used that 7 layers of masking tape have replaced its spine!
My copy of this book is so well used that 7 layers of masking tape have replaced its spine!
May 28, 2017
A collection of essays, novellas/short stories, and poems from EAP.
Recommend 13+
Recommend 13+
March 16, 2020
I’ve never really gone on a deep dive into Edgar Allan Poe’s work before, but it was honestly incredibly interesting. I knew the famous pieces: The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, and Annabel Lee. And those stories & poems do NOT disappoint. The Raven and Annabel Lee are beautiful pieces of poetry, both slightly whimsical yet dark and foreboding. Poe is an expert at creating compelling stories full of fantastical aspects, yet they leave you with an incredibly unsettling feeling while reading them. But, there are many other pieces of work authored by Poe that many people haven’t heard of! Here are some of my favorites:
The Black Cat – Super scary and the voice of the narrator is haunting¬–he tries to explain his insanity in terms of the rational. Cool story but I’m not a big fan of cats every getting hurt (even in fiction) so that made me sad :’(
A Descent into the Maelström – slightly lengthy short story about a work of nature I never considered to be that scary until now–the whirlpool
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar – super interesting! All about hypnosis and speaking from the grave, very dark :)
The Fall of the House of Usher – One of my absolute FAVORITES that I read. It’s where the creepy, cobwebbed, dark haunted house image came from. I was terrified just reading this one!
Hop-Frog – I didn’t love this one, but the image of the ending lowkey haunts me
The Oval Portrait – Very short and very unsettling. Reminds me of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The Pit & the Pendulum – Definitely a classic. I was on the edge of my seat for this entire story. It’s about a prisoner being tortured during the Spanish Inquisition.
The Masque of Red Death – This one is my absolute favorite. It’s kind of a social allegory about class dynamics, but also is about confronting mortality. There’s so much symbolism in here: the differently colored rooms, the clock that leaves all listeners unsettled when it strikes, and the nature of the plague they’re hiding from. Absolutely incredible :)
Honestly, it’s sometimes hard to ignore the treatment of women in pretty much all of Poe’s stories. They’re either dead, dying, or maniacal, and honestly it was kind of exhausting to have such similar setups for each of the stories. When you also consider the fact that Poe married his 13-year-old cousin (and then lied about it on official legal documents) you can tell he probably did not treat women in his life very well. This makes reading some of these slightly uncomfortable.
Overall, I’m not in love with all of Poe’s stories or poems. But a good amount of his pieces stand out against the rest of the mediocre work. His few detective stories involving the character Dupin were the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes! They’re almost identical in style to the later Holmes stories. But I recommend reading some of Poe’s work just for a fun, scary time :)
The Black Cat – Super scary and the voice of the narrator is haunting¬–he tries to explain his insanity in terms of the rational. Cool story but I’m not a big fan of cats every getting hurt (even in fiction) so that made me sad :’(
A Descent into the Maelström – slightly lengthy short story about a work of nature I never considered to be that scary until now–the whirlpool
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar – super interesting! All about hypnosis and speaking from the grave, very dark :)
The Fall of the House of Usher – One of my absolute FAVORITES that I read. It’s where the creepy, cobwebbed, dark haunted house image came from. I was terrified just reading this one!
Hop-Frog – I didn’t love this one, but the image of the ending lowkey haunts me
The Oval Portrait – Very short and very unsettling. Reminds me of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The Pit & the Pendulum – Definitely a classic. I was on the edge of my seat for this entire story. It’s about a prisoner being tortured during the Spanish Inquisition.
The Masque of Red Death – This one is my absolute favorite. It’s kind of a social allegory about class dynamics, but also is about confronting mortality. There’s so much symbolism in here: the differently colored rooms, the clock that leaves all listeners unsettled when it strikes, and the nature of the plague they’re hiding from. Absolutely incredible :)
Honestly, it’s sometimes hard to ignore the treatment of women in pretty much all of Poe’s stories. They’re either dead, dying, or maniacal, and honestly it was kind of exhausting to have such similar setups for each of the stories. When you also consider the fact that Poe married his 13-year-old cousin (and then lied about it on official legal documents) you can tell he probably did not treat women in his life very well. This makes reading some of these slightly uncomfortable.
Overall, I’m not in love with all of Poe’s stories or poems. But a good amount of his pieces stand out against the rest of the mediocre work. His few detective stories involving the character Dupin were the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes! They’re almost identical in style to the later Holmes stories. But I recommend reading some of Poe’s work just for a fun, scary time :)
November 6, 2017
I first read the unabridged Poe when I was fourteen and it was, for better or worse, a major influence on my young mind. I came back to it this year for my main Halloween reading, vaguely expecting Poe to seem adolescent and silly in hindsight. I found the opposite. Poe is an even better writer than I remembered. He is a master of expression, a terrific storyteller, and sometimes profound. Although he’s known for his spooky and macabre stories and poems (The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum...), much of his writing is mundane or even non-fiction. I remembered people saying that he had invented the detective story, and vaguely recalled the Purloined Letter. I now see that he more than invented it. He created their whole ethos, format, and structure. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and others, entirely copied Poe’s invention. The eccentric semi-autistic genius detective. The dull sidekick and scribe. The initial demonstration of deductive power on the sidekick ending with “its obvious now that you explain it.” The frequent, almost religious praise for the power of observation and deduction. The diligent, yet inept, police. Sherlock Holmes is a Poe story in new skin.
Apart from all this, the Unabridged Poe is simply one of those books that is fun to read, one that kept me eager to come back to it.
Apart from all this, the Unabridged Poe is simply one of those books that is fun to read, one that kept me eager to come back to it.
December 23, 2021
I particularly don’t think there’s anything special about this book I do have a couple of favorites types of stories but it is a great introduction to the famous works of Edgar Allan Poe if anyone is interested I personally started reading into it because my English teacher recommended it to me overall it’s a mediocre book!
August 11, 2023
My particular soft cover edition by Running Press (1983) was *missing* pages 321 through 352 (!), forcing me to go online for "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" (free EPub). So maybe undeserving of 5 stars on that basis. However, the content is brilliant beyond measure.
October 15, 2018
A HUGE tome of all his greats - a must for any Poe fan!!
August 27, 2022
I highly recommend reading Poe's work as it was originally intended, in all it's unabridged glory. And if you thought he was long-winded before, you haven't seen anything yet.
August 1, 2023
I enjoyed the stories but the essays could be a little boring.
April 13, 2008
This is ongoing, and I can honestly say that it will stay in my currently reading list.
Edgar Allen Poe is one of the most incredible writers I have ever had the pleasure of reading. His poetry is riveting and his stories are intense. I can read and re-read his work over and over again.
So, in essence this book should be listed as "read", but since I love to read his work over and over again, I will keep it in my currently reading list.
Edgar Allen Poe is one of the most incredible writers I have ever had the pleasure of reading. His poetry is riveting and his stories are intense. I can read and re-read his work over and over again.
So, in essence this book should be listed as "read", but since I love to read his work over and over again, I will keep it in my currently reading list.
November 9, 2009
Reading 15 of these stories en masse was quite revealing. I had only ever experienced Poe before in short bursts. Read in one sitting, his early stories of the macabre were quite disturbing, and certainly suggested a level of madness in the author. However, other stories revealed a biting wit (reminiscent at times of Mark Twain) and the hand of an intelligent craftsman. An overall enjoyable experience.
April 12, 2012
The eight corpses swung in their chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass.
With just that sentence I have gotten many people to read Poe, most have only read the standard stories and poems, never looking into any of his other works. Many claim to hate Poe too and think his works are boring, I believe this is because they haven't read anything else and they don't understand the language of the time.
With just that sentence I have gotten many people to read Poe, most have only read the standard stories and poems, never looking into any of his other works. Many claim to hate Poe too and think his works are boring, I believe this is because they haven't read anything else and they don't understand the language of the time.
October 16, 2016
I love Edgar Allan Poe's work, and all I needed to read were just a few of his short stories and poems to confirm that I love his work. My personal favorite of his stories was The Cask of Amontillado, and I memorized The Raven by heart long before I read it. his work is complex, creepy, and full of emotions that I can't help but feel when I read his work. I haven't read all of it, but someday, I will.
December 16, 2016
I've had this book for more than half my life and have been reading it a story at a time over the years. Finally, I'm done! What can I say, it's Poe! My favorite story is "Hop-Frog." Besides such famous stories as "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Telltale Heart" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" I also love "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether." This is a must for anyone who loves to read, though you can skip "The Philosophy of Furniture..."
August 12, 2015
Edgar Allen Poe was a brilliant writer, nothing more need be said. If you like his more famous work that you had to read in school then you will probably enjoy the most of the rest of his work as well. This volume is everything he ever wrote and I'd be lying if I said it was all brilliant, but enough of it is to warrant a five star rating.
September 22, 2014
This used to be available as a single volume paperback. It's the first edition of each of his stories and poems. Poe revised things a lot, and I find his first edition was the best.
If you haven't read his best stuff yet, I envy you. You are in for a wild ride.
If you haven't read his best stuff yet, I envy you. You are in for a wild ride.
July 29, 2013
Since Poe is easily my favourite poet, having this collection on my shelf simply thrills me. It has everything, from familiar titles like The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, and of course The Raven, to the most obscure works that many have never even heard of.
October 17, 2013
I have been a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe for as long as I can remember. I find all of his work brilliant and having many of his works together in one book is extraordinary. This book definitely captures his versatility.
May 1, 2014
A giant in horrific literature. A must read for any horror/mystery buff. However, it doesn't take a horror buff to appreciate his insistent cadence, his clever wordplay, or his morbid insight into human nature.
June 26, 2017
I'm going to give it a try to read it, at least most of it. I like a lot of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, but I'm not into poems and the old English language is hard for me. I'll probably read this between other books.
May 17, 2009
Some really good and imaginative stuff. Some other harder to get into reading.
September 11, 2010
I read 10 short stories from this book.
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