Search results for ""author edgar allan poe""

And now I found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact'. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an archetypal American story of escape from home and family which traces a young man's rite of passage through a series of terrible brushes with death during a fateful sea voyage. But it also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, at last leaving the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution. Apart from its violence and mystery, the tale calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing truth. Layer upon layer of elaborate hoaxes include its author's own role of posing as ghost-writer of the narrative; Pym - his only novel - has become the key text for our understanding of Poe. This edition offers eight short tales which are linked to Pym by their treatment of persistent themes - fantastic voyages, gigantic whirlpools, and premature burials - or by their ironic commentary on Poe's mystification of his readers. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction and have also created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Yet, as well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Abandoning the criteria of characterization and plotting in favour of blurred boundaries between self and other, will and morality, identity and memory, Poe uses the Gothic to question the integrity of human existence. Indeed, Poe is less interested in solving puzzles or in moral retribution than in exposing the misconceptions that make things seem `mysterious' in the first place. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this critical edition selects twenty-four tales and places the most popular -- 'The Pit and the Pendulum', `The Fall of the House of Usher', `The Masque of the Red Death', `The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and `The Purloined Letter' -- alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays, and political satires.

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Legendary Black Veil Brides' founder and frontman Andy Biersack curated his favorite Edgar Allan Poe tales, presented here in their original language with supplemental materials. Dive back into classics like The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, The Oval Portrait, and The Mask of the Red Death with accompanying original artwork and a foreword from Andy himself. This compact, small but mighty, Poe collection is made to be a staple on your shelf.

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"The most consistent of all series in terms of language control, length, and quality of story." David R. Hill, Director of the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading.

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This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates an intense interest in aesthetic issues and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. The Fall of the House of Usher describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In The Tell Tale Heart, a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Cask of Amontillado explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate.

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Poe's 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' introduced the world to its first literary detective, Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, and established many literary devices used in future fictional detectives, including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Beyond Rue Morgue invites its authors to continue Dupin's exploits, while retaining that touch of the strange and macabre for which Poe's work is so well known.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and poems are among the most haunting and indelible in American literature, but critics for decades persisted in seeing Poe as an anomaly, or even an anachronism. His works, with their bizarrely motivated characters and mysterious settings, did not seem to be a part of the literature of early nineteenth-century America. Critics realize now, though, that Poe was even more a part of the contemporary American literary scene than many of his more “nationalistic” peers, and that in much of his work Poe was making commentaries on slavery and Southern social attitudes, technology, the urban landscape, political economy, and other subjects.This Broadview Edition includes a selection of Poe’s poems, tales, and sketches in such diverse modes of writing as tales of the supernatural and psychic conflict, satires and hoaxes, science fiction and detective fiction, and nonfiction essays on literary and social topics. These are supplemented by a selection of contextual documents—newspaper and magazine articles, treatises, and other historical texts—that will help readers understand the social, literary, and intellectual milieus in which Poe wrote.

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Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction and have also created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Yet, as well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Abandoning the criteria of characterization and plotting in favour of blurred boundaries between self and other, will and morality, identity and memory, Poe uses the Gothic to question the integrity of human existence. Indeed, Poe is less interested in solving puzzles or in moral retribution than in exposing the misconceptions that make things seem `mysterious' in the first place. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new critical edition selects twenty-four tales and places the most popular - `The Fall of the House of Usher', `The Masque of the Red Death', `The Murders in the Rue Morgue; and `The Purloined Letter' - alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays and political satires. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Having been condemned to death by the Spanish Inquisition, the narrator descends into a kind of hell. Dizzy with weakness and fainting with fear, he experiences such torments that death itself would be welcome. What troubles him most is the eternal question: how will he die? Toledo Prison is notorious for the torture of the condemned. What minds have dreamed up the terror of the pit in the centre of the cell? What is the significance of the painted figure of Time with his menacing pendulum? Why do the walls glow with heat?Experience with the narrator the intensity of his suffering when death seems inevitable but its form uncertain. Can anything, or anybody help him?

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The arrival of a gold bug leads the three men on an exciting adventure towards skeletons, a skull and a hunt for buried treasure.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s only long fiction has provoked intense scholarly discussions about its meaning since its first publication. The novel relates the adventures of Pym after he stows away on a whaling ship, where he endures starvation, encounters with cannibals, a whirlpool, and finally a journey to an Antarctic sea. It draws on the conventions of travel writing and science fiction, and on Poe’s own experiences at sea, but is ultimately in a category of its own.Appendices include virtually all of the contemporary sources of exploration and south polar navigation that Poe consulted and adapted to the narrative, together with reviews and notices of Pym and a sampling of responses to the novel from a wide array of authors, from Herman Melville to Jules Verne. Seven illustrations are also included.

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America's most influential literary figure worldwide is familiar to most readers of short fiction through only about a dozen stories. This is because many of Poe’s tales depend on knowledge a reader in 1835 or 1845 might have had that a typical reader in 2000 would not. In this extensively annotated and meticulously edited selection of Poe’s short fiction, Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine connect Poe to major literary forces of his era and to the rapidly changing U.S. of the 1830s and 1840s, discussing Shelley, Carlyle, Byron, Emerson, and Hawthorne, as well as the railroad, photography, and the telegraph. In the process, they reveal a Poe immersed in the America of his day--its politics, science, technology, best-selling books, biases, arts, journalism, fads, scandals, and even sexual mores--and render accessible all thirty-two stories included here. The general Introduction, the headnote to each story, and the annotations included in this volume have been extensively revised from the editors’ critically acclaimed editions of the complete short fiction: The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition (1976, 1990).

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The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings is a collection that displays the full force of Edgar Allen Poe's mastery of both Gothic horror and the short story form. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by David Galloway.This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates his intense interest in aesthetic issues, and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is a slow-burning Gothic horror, describing the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In 'The Tell-Tale Heart', a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Raven' and 'The Cask of Amontillado' explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. In his introduction David Galloway re-examines the myths surrounding Poe's life and reputation. This edition includes a new chronology and suggestions for further reading.Although dissipated in his youth and plagued by mental instability towards the end of his life, Boston-born Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) had a variety of occupations, including service in the US army and magazine editor, as well as his remarkable literary output.If you enjoyed The Fall of the House of Usher, you might like Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, also available in Penguin Classics.'The most original genius that America has produced'Alfred, Lord Tennyson'Poe has entered our popular consciousness as no other American writer'The New York Times Book Review

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With an Introduction by John S. Whitley, University of Sussex. This collection of Poe's best stories contains all the terrifying and bewildering tales that characterise his work. As well as the Gothic horror of such famous stories as 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Premature Burial' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart', all of Poe's Auguste Dupin stories are included. These are the first modern detective stories and include 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' and 'The Purloined Letter'.

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America's most influential literary figure worldwide is familiar to most readers of short fiction through only about a dozen stories. This is because many of Poe’s tales depend on knowledge a reader in 1835 or 1845 might have had that a typical reader in 2000 would not. In this extensively annotated and meticulously edited selection of Poe’s short fiction, Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine connect Poe to major literary forces of his era and to the rapidly changing U.S. of the 1830s and 1840s, discussing Shelley, Carlyle, Byron, Emerson, and Hawthorne, as well as the railroad, photography, and the telegraph. In the process, they reveal a Poe immersed in the America of his day--its politics, science, technology, best-selling books, biases, arts, journalism, fads, scandals, and even sexual mores--and render accessible all thirty-two stories included here. The general Introduction, the headnote to each story, and the annotations included in this volume have been extensively revised from the editors’ critically acclaimed editions of the complete short fiction: The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition (1976, 1990).

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