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See this item's eligibility during checkout.Home & Garden | Home » » » Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems | | | | | | | Description: | | This collection of 73 short stories and 48 poems includes such masterpieces as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Purloined Letter, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and Murders in the Rue Morgue. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Edgar Allan Poe | | Hardcover:
| 842 pages | | Publisher:
| Castle Books | | Publication Date:
| 2003-04 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0785814531 | | Package Length:
| 9.3 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.9 inches | | Package Height:
| 2.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.85 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 40 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Where Sanity DepartsAug 25, 2009
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.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Sometimes less is moreJul 20, 2009
When you think of Poe, you generally first think of his classic macabre short stories and poems, and then perhaps you also think of his detective fiction, often considered the forerunner of Sherlock Holmes and company.
But after finishing this book, I discovered that those really made up a small amount of what he wrote. Mostly he seems to have written rather heavy handed satire. Maybe it was funny back then, but it's not especially funny now. Perhaps if there were annotations explaining just what he was satirizing, it would be better. But even so, most of it is just, so, er, thickly written, that it's hard to wade through.
So basically, I think you're probably off just buying a book that isn't so complete. You really probably don't want to read most of this.
That said, for $10, it's a pretty good deal. Lots of pages, seems sturdy of binding and paper. It's a little hard to read, I don't know if it's the text size, the type face they used, or if I need glasses.
 Did you know he wrote Sci-Fi? Adventure? Mystery too?May 12, 2009
What a treat! I got this book because I remembered a few tales from high school and wanted to revisit them. It's a treasure indeed containing almost all genres of fiction with difficult yet fascinating verbage. I'm not a heavy reader, but this book has had me glued for a long time and will likely read a lot of it again.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Anthology of Edgar Allen PoeMay 05, 2009
The Anthology is just that. A collection of Poe's work. While the thickness of the book appears intimidating at first, the book is well- written, and easy to follow. Enthusiasts should have this book on their "must needs" list.
I purchased one for my niece, and a second one for classroom use, as I am an English teacher. With that in mind, pardon any misspellings.
Great GiftFeb 28, 2009
I gave this as a gift to my girlfriend for her birthday. She loves it! Easy transaction and fast delivery too.
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