Esteemed as a literary critic and poet, Edgar Allan Poe was most highly
acclaimed for his tales and sketches. He transformed the short story
from anecdote to art, virtually created the detective story, and
perfected the psychological thriller. This volume is the first of two,
edited by the consummate Poe scholar Thomas Ollive Mabbott, collecting
all the tales of this master of the uncanny, the unnerving, and the
terrifying.
Poe's stories reflect his professed method of "writing as if the author
were firmly impressed with the truth, yet astonished at the immensity of
the wonders he related." Marrying grotesque inventiveness with superb
plot construction, Poe's strikingly original tales often use only one
main character and one main incident. In many of them, horror and
suspense, revenge and torture, are laced with hilarious satire. Each
volume is enriched with Mabbott's detailed and authoritative notes on
sources, the history and collation of all known texts authorized by Poe,
and variants of Poe's "final" version.
Volume 1 includes Poe's earliest parodies, beginning in 1831, and
gathers his gothic tales written through 1842. The stories collected in
this volume include "Ms. Found in a Bottle," the horrific "Berenice,"
"Ligeia" (which Poe considered his finest tale), "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue," and one of his most famous stories, "The Fall of the House of
Usher."
Promising spine-tingling delights and sleepless nights, this annotated
edition of Tales and Sketches is a treasure trove for scholars and
general readers alike, confirming Poe's status as one of literary art's
"most brilliant but erratic stars."
