Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe
List Price:
Our Price: $4.44
You Save: $8.55 (66%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.20 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Edgar Allan PoeEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-11-29
ISBN: 0785814531
Number of pages: 842
Publisher: Castle Books
Book Reviews of Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems
Book Review: Where Sanity Departs
Summary: 4 Stars
Edgar Allan Poe was more than another great writer. He was the ferryman to a world where all earthly norms fall away, and sense becomes nonsense. In his introduction to this volume, Wilbur Scott describes the goal of Poe's poetry being "to move the reader from the quotidian world of fact and tedium into a transcendent world of supernal loveliness."
Same with many of his tales, also produced here, with this important addendum: Sometimes the world Poe takes you do is not any fancy land at all; but a bleak, rocky chasm with no bottom.
Poe's been dead 160 years, but he's still THE man of American letters, the one classic American author ordinary people are eager to read. Of his stories, which I prefer to his poems just because I'm that kind of guy, you have an array of macabre milestones like "The Cask Of Amontillado", "The Black Cat", "The Fall Of The House Of Usher", "Hop-Frog", "The Man Of The Crowd", and my favorite from middle school, "The Tell-Tale Heart."
You also have a rousing detective story, "The Purloined Letter", and even some fine humor pieces that are less well-known, like "The Spectacles," "The Man That Was All Used Up", and "The Business Man". "A Predicament" presents us with the story of a woman so bent on trying to be macabre that she writes lovingly, excessively, of her own decapitation. Poe was apparently satirizing a popular ghoulish fiction magazine of the time, though he seems to be sending up himself. The laughs are still there more than 150 years later.
"The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolent air of independence and contempt with which it regarded me after it was out," Poe has the narrator relate affectedly. "There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airs it gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been disgusting."
So why only four stars? I took one off for the presentation, and one off for the entirety of Poe (sentences to be served concurrently). This edition is bare bones, nothing but the prose and poems, aside from Scott's introduction, with no attempts at placing recondite items of Poe's in historical context, or even furnishing likely writing dates. If any author cries out for a loving editor who sticks his or her nose into things to help explain the writer, it's Poe. I'm sure not going to figure out what he was trying to do with "X-ing A Paragrab" on my ownsome.
No author is going to shine as brightly with the whole of their work before you, not if it's Shakespeare, and certainly not if it's Poe. In some ways he's overrated ("The Pit And The Pendulum" is a tension-filled potboiler with a nonsensical ending, though at least its short, which can not be said of the silly "Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym"). In others, he's just a little too in love with his own vocabulary. "The Domain Of Arnhem" is a great example of how quickly Poe can send you to Eldorado by putting you to sleep with a story going nowhere.
Finally, Poe is very morbid. Death is a constant presence in his stories, and sometimes it gets the better of him, like in "Mesmeric Revelation", when a person who dies under hypnosis conducts a metaphysics seminar from beyond the grave. It would be better if the compilers of this book spread out the "Buried Lady" stories, rather than ran them all together like a cattle train.
The nice thing about a book like this is the opportunity to find a lost treasure, like "The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether" or "The Gold Bug", ironically Poe's biggest financial success in his lifetime though now deemed racist in many quarters. And of course you have the greatest poem in the world, for someone like me who needs the poet to do all the work: "The Raven". Even if the rest of this collection was a pile of hay, the Hope Diamond would still be the Hope Diamond buried within it.
Summary of Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems
This collection of 73 short stories and 48 poems includes many masterpieces.
Classics Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Classics Books
Native sonby Richard Wright
Perennial Library; Published: 1987; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.75
Native Son: And How Bigger Was Bornby Richard Wright
Perennial; Published: 1993-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $26.84
Raphael and the Noble Taskby Catherine Salton
Harper; Published: 2000-10-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops:
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.77
Price in other shops:
The Great Divorce CDby C. S. Lewis
HarperAudio; Published: 2003-11-25; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $12.65
Price in other shops:
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Black Coffee (Poirot)by Agatha Christie
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2002-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $68.32
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1960s)by Joan Didion
Flamingo; Published: 2001-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.25
Similar Books and other products
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 2by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Barnes & Noble Classics; Published: 2004-09-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops:
Talking About Detective Fiction (Vintage)by P.D. James
Vintage; Published: 2011-05-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Brighton Rock (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)by Graham Greene
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-09-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.98
Price in other shops:
A Study in Scarlet (Illustrated Classics): A Sherlock Holmes Graphic Novelby Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sterling; Published: 2010-02-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.47
Price in other shops:
Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madnessby Edgar Allan Poe, Gris Grimly
Atheneum Books for Young Readers; Published: 2004-08-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops:
Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Vol. 1by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Bantam Classics; Published: 1986-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.84
Price in other shops:
The Complete Sherlock Holmesby Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Doubleday; Published: 1960-05-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $76.00
Five Great Science Fiction Novelsby H. G. Wells
Dover Publications; Published: 2004-09-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.40
Price in other shops:
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poeby Edgar Allan Poe
Doubleday; Published: 1966-11-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.48
Price in other shops:
The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Storiesby Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Bantam Classics; Published: 1986-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.49
Price in other shops: