Edgar Allan Poe

    • Hutchisson, James M.
      Poe
      Summary:Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American original—a luminous literary theorist, an erratic genius, and an analyst par excellence of human obsession and compulsion. The scope of his literary achievements and the dramatic character of Poe’s life have drawn readers and critics to him in droves. And yet, upon his death, one obituary penned by a literary enemy in the New York Daily Tribune cascaded into a lasting stain on Poe’s character, leaving a historic misunderstanding. Many remember Poe as a difficult, self-pitying, troubled drunkard often incapable of caring for himself. Poe reclaims the Baltimore and Virginia writer’s reputation and power, retracing Poe’s life and career.



    • Ackroyd, Peter
      Poe : a life cut short
      Summary:Explores Poe’s literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin and his much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol.


    • Poe, Edgar Allan
      Steampunk Poe
      Summary:Presents a collection of Poe’s short stories and poems, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Raven,” accompanied by steampunk-inspired illustrations.


    • Collins, Paul
      Edgar Allan Poe : the fever called living
      Summary:Looming large in the popular imagination as a serious poet and lively drunk who died in penury, Edgar Allan Poe was also the most celebrated and notorious writer of his day. He died broke and alone at the age of forty, but not before he had written some of the greatest works in the English language, from the chilling “The Tell-Tale Heart” to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”–the first modern detective story–to the iconic poem “The Raven.” Poe’s life was one of unremitting hardship. His father abandoned the family, and his mother died when he was three. Poe was thrown out of West Point, and married his beloved thirteen-year-old cousin, who died of tuberculosis at twenty-four. He was so poor that he burned furniture to stay warm. He was a scourge to other poets, but more so to himself. In the hands of Paul Collins, one of our liveliest historians, this mysteriously conflicted figure emerges as a genius both driven and undone by his artistic ambitions. Collins illuminates Poe’s huge successes and greatest flop (a 143-page prose poem titled Eureka), and even tracks down what may be Poe’s first published fiction, long hidden under an enigmatic byline. Clear-eyed and sympathetic, Edgar Allan Poe is a spellbinding story about the man once hailed as “the Shakespeare of America.” —


    • Poe, Edgar Allan
      The Raven
      Summary:Presents Poe’s haunting poem, which explores the terrifying truths that lurk deep within the human psyche.


    • Poe, Edgar Allan
      The tales of Edgar Allan Poe
      Summary:An illustrated collection of stories by the well-known horror author, including “The Gold Bug,” “The Tell-tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.”






    • Poe, Edgar Allan.
      The fall of the house of Usher
      Summary:The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick’s condition can be described according to its terminology. It includes a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick’s twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick’s paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it…