essays by edgar allan poe

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Poe, edgar allan.

• Thomas Wright
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.612
• Published online: 26 September 2017

At the beginning of the twenty-first century , Edgar Allan Poe was more popular than ever. The Raven and a number of his Gothic and detective tales were among the most famous writings in the English language, and they were often some of the first works of literature that young adults read. They had also entered the popular imagination—football teams and beers were named after them, and they had inspired episodes of the animated television show The Simpsons and a number of rock songs. Poe also continued to exercise a profound influence over writers and artists. Two of the most popular authors of the second half of the twentieth century , Stephen King and Isaac Asimov , acknowledged Poe as an important precursor. Countless novels published at the end of the twentieth century , such as Peter Ackroyd 's The Plato Papers: A Prophesy ( 1999 ) and Mark Z. Danielewski 's House of Leaves ( 2000 ), also bear definite traces of his influence. The Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges , whose own works are greatly indebted to Poe, once called him the unacknowledged father of twentieth-century literature, and Poe's influence shows no signs of diminishing. Despite his enormous popularity and influence, Poe's canonical status is still challenged by certain commentators. Harold Bloom , for instance, regards Poe's writings as vulgar and stylistically flawed. Bloom follows in a long line of Poe detractors, many of whom have been amazed by the fact that what T. S. Eliot called his “puerile” and “haphazard” productions could have influenced “great” writers such as the French poets Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé .

Poe criticism was, however, far more favorable (and far more plentiful) over the last half of the twentieth century than previously. Poe is indeed something of a boom industry in academia. New Critics, New Historicists, psychoanalysts, and poststructuralists all find his works suggestive. Few of these critics are interested in making aesthetic judgements, however, and those who concern themselves with such things continue to express doubts about Poe's achievement.

As a result, Poe remains something of an enigma. To many he is a formative influence, a genius, and an inspiration; to others he is a shoddy stylist and a charlatan. It would be more reasonable, perhaps, to regard Poe as all of these things and to accept James Russell Lowell 's famous judgment that he was “Three fifths…genius, and two fifths sheer fudge.” Few of Poe's readers are reasonable, however, as he is one of those writers who is either loved or hated.

Poe's Persona

One of the reasons Poe has been far more popular and influential than writers who, according to some, have produced works of greater literary value is that he created, with a little help from others, a fascinating literary persona. That persona was of an author at once bohemian and extremely intellectual. The bohemian aspect was largely the creation of his “friend” Rufus Wilmot Griswold , who in his obituary of Poe described him as a depraved and demonic writer. Poe himself was responsible for the intellectual element: he presented himself to the public in his writings as an erudite and bookish scholar.

Poe's persona captured the imagination of the world; like Byron before him, he became a kind of mythical or archetypal figure. Nineteenth-century poets such as Ernest Dowson and Baudelaire (who prayed to Poe and dressed up as him) regarded Poe as the original bohemian poète maudit (a tradition in which the poet explores extremes of experience and emotional depth) and as the first self-conscious literary artist. As such, he seemed to be a prefiguring type of themselves. This legendary persona may be at odds with Poe's real personality and the actual facts of his biography, but that is beside the point. What matters is that it fascinated and continues to fascinate people.

Poe's legendary personality and life have also provided people with a context in which his writings can be read (and it is worth noting here that an account of Poe's life has traditionally appeared as a preface to anthologies of his works). As is the case with the Irish writer Oscar Wilde , we tend to read Poe's works as expressions of his (real or mythical) character and as dramatizations of his personality. This confers a degree of homogeneity on his writings; although he experimented in a variety of forms and wrote on numberless topics, we think of all of his productions as “Poe performances.”

Early Poetry

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on 19 January 1809 , the son of the itinerant actors David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold , both of whom died when he was still an infant. He was brought up by the Richmond tobacco merchant John Allan , with whom he had a difficult relationship. Educated in London and then, for a brief period, at the University of Virginia, Poe entered the U.S. Army in 1827 . It was always Poe's ambition to be recognized as a great poet, and in 1827 he published his first volume of verse, Tamerlane and Other Poems , under the name “a Bostonian.”

The title poem of the slim collection is a monologue by Tamerlane, the Renaissance Turkish warrior. The other poems are conventional romantic meditations on death, solitude, nature, dreams, and vanished youth in which Poe comes before us, as it were, in the theatrical garb of the romantic poet. The poems display Poe's considerable gift for imitation (which he later used to great effect in his prose parodies) and his habit of half quoting from his favorite authors. They contain countless echoes from romantic poets (especially Lord Byron). It is not, however, so much a question of plagiarism as it is of Poe serving a literary apprenticeship and placing himself within a poetic tradition.

In 1829 Poe published, under his own name, his second verse collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems . It contained revised versions of some of the poems that had been published in Tamerlane (Poe was a zealous reviser) and seven new poems. Sonnet—To Science , Poe's famous poem on the antagonistic relationship between science and poetry, opens the book. It is followed by the title poem, Al Aaraaf , which has been variously interpreted as a lament for the demise of the creative imagination in a materialistic world and as an allegorical representation of Poe's aesthetic theories. The poem is characterized by its variety of meter, its heavy baroque effects, and its extreme obscurity. The volume has its lighter moments, however. Fairyland , with its “Dim vales,” “Huge moons,” and yellow albatrosses is one of Poe's first exercises in burlesque and self-parody. It was typical of Poe to include, within the same volume, serious poems and comic pieces that seem to parody those compositions.

In 1831 , wishing to leave the army, Poe got himself expelled from the West Point military academy. In that year he also brought out a third volume of poetry, Poems by Edgar A. Poe . This collection represents a considerable advance on his earlier efforts and contains famous poems such as To Helen and The Doomed City (later called The City in the Sea ). The former, which is perhaps the most beautiful of all Poe's lyrics, is a stately hymn to Helen of Troy, which in its later, revised form, contained the celebrated lines:

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the Glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.

The Doomed City is a wonderful evocation of a silent city beneath the sea.

Both poems create a haunting atmosphere through the use of alliteration, assonance, measured rhythms, and gentle rhymes; they also contain words with long open vowel sounds such as “loom,” “gloom,” “yore,” and “bore” that were to become a Poe trademark. Because of Poe's fondness for such techniques, it is hardly surprising that his poems have been compared to music. Poe believed that music was the art that most effectively excited, elevated, and intoxicated the soul and thus gave human beings access to the ethereal realm of supernal beauty, a realm in which Poe passionately believed and for which he seems to have pined throughout his life. As Poe aimed to create similar effects with his verse, he attempted to marry poetry and music. This is why the rhythm of his verse is perfectly measured and often incantatory; it is also why he frequently chose words for their sounds rather than for their sense. In To Helen , for example, he writes of “those Nicéan barks of yore,” a rather confused classical allusion but a word that produces wonderfully musical vibrations.

Poe offers us what he called “a suggestive indefiniteness of meaning with a view of bringing about vague and therefore spiritual effects .” Decadent and symbolist poets of the nineteenth century , including Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine , were heavily influenced by Poe's method, and they consciously imitated his “word-music.” They also regarded Poe as their most important precursor because of his theoretical statements about poetry. Indeed, Poe was (and perhaps remains) as famous a critic and theoretician of verse as he was a poet. He is particularly remembered for his powerful denunciation of didactic poetry and for his emphasis on the self-consciousness and deliberateness of the poet's art.

Most of Poe's important theoretical pronouncements were made in the essays and lectures he wrote toward the end of his life. In Poems he wrote a prefatory “Letter to Mr —,” which represents his first theoretical statement about verse. Here he defined poetry as a pleasurable idea set to music. He also argued, with more than a slight nod to the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge , that poetry “is opposed to a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having for its object an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure.” At its best, Poe's poetry embodies such ideas by creating vague yet powerful atmospheric effects and by giving the reader intense aesthetic pleasure.

Poe's early poetry received mixed reviews and failed to establish him as either a popular or a critically acclaimed author. Later commentators, such as T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman , criticized its limited range and extent; they also bemoaned its lack of intellectual and moral content. Others dismissed Poe as a mere verse technician; Emerson famously referred to him as “the jingle man.” Poe's verse was, however, revered by later nineteenth-century poets such as Mallarmé and Dowson, and considering his influence on such Decadent and symbolist writers, he can perhaps be regarded as the most influential American poet of that century after Whitman.

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

Numerous connections exist between Poe's early verse and the short stories he started to write for magazines and newspapers around 1830 . (Poe's decision to turn his hand to prose was partly because of the lack of commercial and critical success achieved by his poetry.) In some of his stories Poe included poems; he also returned to forms, such as the dramatic monologue and the dialogue between disembodied spirits, that he had used in poems such as Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf . And yet Poe's tales are clearly distinguished from his early verse, most obviously by their variety of mood, content, and theme. Poe seems to have been liberated as a writer when he turned from romantic verse to the more flexible, capacious, and traditionally heterogeneous genre of the short story. He now had at his disposal a multitude of tones and devices, and in the twenty-five stories that he wrote in the 1830s and that were collected in the anthology Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (2 vols., 1840 ), he exploited these to great effect.

In fact, such is the diversity of the style and mood of Poe's early stories that the division of the contents of Tales into the two categories of grotesque and arabesque seems simplistic and inadequate. Poe's grotesques are comic and burlesque stories that usually involve exaggeration and caricature. In this group we can include the tales Lionizing and The Scythe of Time (earlier called A Predicament ), which are satires of the contemporary literary scene. Another characteristic of Poe's grotesque stories is the introduction of elements of the ludicrous and the absurd. In the tale Loss of Breath , the protagonist literally loses his breath and goes out in search of it. It is a shame that Poe's early grotesques are generally neglected, because not only do they testify to his range and resourcefulness as a writer, but some of them are compelling and funny. The neglect results partly from the fact that, in order to be appreciated, they require extensive knowledge of the literary and political state of antebellum America and partly because they have been overshadowed by his arabesque tales.

Poe's arabesque tales are intricately and elaborately constructed prose poems. The word “arabesque” can also be applied to those stories in which Poe employed Gothic techniques. Gothic literature, which typically aimed to produce effects of mystery and horror, was established in the latter half of the eighteenth century by writers such as the English novelist Anne Radcliffe and the German story writer E. T. A. Hoffmann . By the beginning of the nineteenth century , the Gothic short story had become one of the most popular forms of magazine literature in England and America.

It is generally agreed that Poe's particular contribution to Gothic literature was his use of the genre to explore and describe the psychology of humans under extreme and abnormal conditions. Typically, his characters are at the mercy of powers over which they have no control and which their reason cannot fully comprehend. These powers may take the form of sudden, irrational impulses (“the imp of the perverse” that inspires the protagonist of Berenice to extract the teeth of his buried wife, for example), or as is the case with the eponymous hero of William Wilson , a hereditary disease. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque contains some of Poe's most famous Gothic productions, including Morella , Ligeia , and Berenice (the stories of the so-called “marriage group,” which concern the deaths of beautiful young women), along with perhaps the most popular of all his tales, The Fall of the House of Usher .

“Usher” is a characteristic arabesque production. It exhibits many of the trappings of Gothic fiction: a decaying mansion located in a gloomy setting, a protagonist (Roderick Usher) who suffers from madness and a peculiar sensitivity of temperament inherited from his ancient family, and a woman (his sister) who is prematurely buried and who rises from her tomb. Yet from Gothic clichés such as these, Poe produced a tale of extraordinary power. Indeed, perhaps only Stephen King in The Shining ( 1977 ) has succeeded in investing a building with such horror and in conveying the impression that it is alive.

Apart from the grotesque and arabesque stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque includes other varieties of writing. Hans Phaall has been classed as science fiction, and King Pest is a surreal historical adventure. Several stories contain elements of all of these genres; Metzengerstein , for example, is at once a work of historical fiction, a powerful Gothic tale, and a witty and grotesque parody of the latter genre. The diversity of the contents of the tales, and the variety of theme and style within individual stories, must be seen in the context of the original form in which they appeared. All of the tales were first published in popular newspapers and magazines from 1832 to 1839 . The audience for such publications was extremely heterogeneous, and Poe was clearly trying to appeal to as large a cross-section as possible. We should also remember that, unlike subscribers to weightier publications, the magazine- and newspaper-reading public had a very limited attention span. Readers craved novelty, sensation, and diversity.

Poe was profoundly influenced by the tastes of this public. In a letter to Thomas Willis White , a newspaper editor, he remarked that the public loves “the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful colored into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.” In Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque this is precisely what he gave them. The most obvious characteristic of his stories is their sensationalism: they include accounts of balloon journeys to the moon, premature burials, encounters with the devil, and a number of gruesome deaths.

From the early 1830s Poe planned to gather together his short stories and publish them in book form. In the mid-1830s he unsuccessfully offered for publication a collection of stories under the title Tales of the Folio Club . Poe devised an elaborate plan for the “Folio Club” volume. The tales were to be read out, over the course of a single evening, by various members of a literary club, and each story was to be followed by the critical remarks of the rest of the company. The book was evidently intended as a satire of popular contemporary modes of fiction and criticism; as such it can be compared to the work of Poe's English contemporary, Thomas Love Peacock . The satirical intent is clearly indicated by the names and descriptions of the various club members, which include “Mr Snap, the President, who is a very lank man with a hawk nose.” Many of the figures were based on real people.

When considering Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , it is important to remember the dramatic nature of its forerunner. Our knowledge of the Folio Club gathering encourages us to read Poe's stories as the compositions of various personae and to regard Poe as author of the authors of the tales. W. H. Auden described Poe's writing as operatic, and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque does indeed resemble an opera in which Poe's narrators walk on and off the stage. Thus, the narrator of Morella mutters, melodramatically, “Years—years, may pass away, but the memory of that epoch—never!” as he leaves the stage to make way for the narrator of Lionizing . “I am,” the latter remarks to the reader-audience by way of introduction, “that is to say, I was —a great man.”

Poe's gift for impersonating his narrators is remarkable, and like a great dramatist, he seemed to contain multitudes of characters. The comparison with the playwright is appropriate because the world of Poe's writing is a thoroughly theatrical one. In it the laws of “real life” (of psychological accuracy and consistency, for instance) do not apply, and in this context we can recall Poe's famous distinction between “Hamlet the dramatis persona” and “Hamlet the man.” In the Poe universe, bizarre and absurd incidents occur on a regular basis, the dialogue and the settings are distinctly stagy, and everything is hyperbolic. As the above quotations from Morella and Lionizing suggest, it is also a world in which tragedy can be quickly followed by comedy.

And here we might recall that Poe was the son of two itinerant actors. It is particularly interesting to note that Poe's beloved mother, Eliza, was renowned for her ability to play an enormous range of tragic and comic roles, often in the same theatrical season. Her son seems to have inherited this gift as, in his writings, he effortlessly swaps a suit of sables for motley attire. At times, as in The Visionary (later called The Assignation ), which contains elements of tragedy, parody, and self-parody, Poe wore both costumes at the same time. And this in turn may help us understand the appeal of Gothic literature for Poe, because it is a form of writing in which comedy intensifies the horror by setting it in relief. Those who have adapted Poe's tales for the cinema have appreciated the humorous elements of the Gothic, as their films are at once terrifying and hilarious.

Drama and theatricality are in fact everywhere in Poe's writing. As a young poet, he effortlessly mimicked the styles of writers such as Byron; as a reviewer he convincingly adopted the tone of the authoritative critic. Throughout his works he seems to entertain and juggle ideas rather than to offer them as articles of faith, and the idea of literary performance is central to his authorship. Poe is a writer-performer whose productions can be compared to virtuoso literary displays. As readers we are like members of a theater audience who are by turns enthralled, horrified, and dazzled, and when the performance is over we applaud Poe's artistry.

An appreciation of the theatrical nature of Poe's work has important consequences for criticism. If we view Poe's writing as fundamentally dramatic, it becomes impossible to discover Poe's individual voice in the universe of voices that is his work or to analyze it from the point of view of his authorial intentions. It also becomes essential to judge the work's style and content in terms of its dramatic appropriateness: when Poe's writing is weak and verbose, for example, this may be the appropriate style for a particular narrator.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The only full-length novel that Poe would write, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket ( 1838 ), was begun on the suggestion of a publisher to whom he had unsuccessfully offered Tales of the Folio Club . Its first two installments appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger , and it came out in book form in 1838 . In choosing to write a sensational sea adventure—the plot includes, among other things, a mutiny, a shipwreck, a famine, and a massacre—Poe once again selected an extremely popular subject and form.

As a realistic chronicle of an utterly fantastic journey, the novel is similar to some of the stories Poe had written in the 1830s, such as MS. Found in a Bottle . Cast in the form of a first-person account of a real sea voyage and including journal entries, “factual” information, and scholarly footnotes, Pym is written with a sharp attention to significant detail that recalls the novels of the eighteenth-century author Daniel Defoe . This attention to detail, which can be found throughout Poe's fiction, confers a degree of verisimilitude on narrations that lack psychological realism. Poe's fictional works are not, in other words, realistic, but they have a reality of their own. Pym is also similar to a Defoe novel in that it is digressive and loosely structured. In contrast to Poe's short stories, it lacks a definite architecture and fails to create a unified impression or effect. Curiously enough, this is precisely what makes it such a hypnotic book. Pym's journey, like that of Karl Rossman in Franz Kafka 's Amerika ( 1927 ), is imbued with a vague sense of horror.

Pym also contains a preface, reminiscent of Defoe, in which the narrator claims that the book is a real account of a voyage although its first installments in the Southern Literary Messenger had appeared under the name of the short-story writer, “Mr Poe.” Few reviewers were taken in by this typical Poe hoax, and the novel was generally reviewed with varying degrees of enthusiasm, as a work of fiction. Until around the 1960s, critics tended to agree with Poe's own dismissive estimation of his “very silly” novel. Since then, however, it has received much better press and has inspired a variety of readings that range from the autobiographical to the allegorical. Like many of Poe's works, it is Pym 's ambiguity and indefiniteness that make it so suggestive. These qualities are perfectly embodied in the novel's famous last line. As the eponymous hero's boat heads toward a cataract, a shrouded human figure suddenly appears, “And the hue of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.” At about the same time Poe also wrote two other works, both unfinished, that can be briefly mentioned here. The Journal of Julius Rodman , a Pym -like account of an expedition across the Rocky Mountains, appeared in Gentleman's Magazine in 1840 . Five years previously the Southern Literary Messenger had published scenes from Politian , a blank verse tragedy set in Renaissance Italy that would later be included in The Raven and Other Poems ( 1845 ).

Poe's Criticism

Throughout his life Poe wrote a great deal of literary journalism and worked in an editorial capacity for a variety of newspapers. It was also one of his great ambitions to edit his own magazine. As a critic he was outspoken, vitriolic, and fearless. He highlighted the technical limitations of the books he reviewed, accused several authors (most famously Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ) of plagiarism, and took great delight in attacking the New England literary establishment.

Poe was not simply motivated by a disinterested concern for the health of letters; he was also desperately trying to carve his way to literary fame. That is why his criticism tended to be as sensational as his short-story writing: controversy was the equivalent of the Gothic and grotesque effects of his fiction. Without money or regular employment, Poe had to achieve celebrity status in order to survive in the literary marketplace, and if he could not be famous then he would be notorious. He did everything he could to keep his name before the public, even going to the extent of anonymously reviewing his own works.

Poe also used the pages of the popular press to fashion and present an image of himself as a man of immense erudition. In his articles, as in his short stories, he included countless quotations and phrases from various languages; he also made a great exhibition of his learning. Poe's “Marginalia,” published in newspapers during the 1840s, consists of comments and meditations that he claimed to have scribbled in the margins of the books in his library. “I sought relief,” he commented, like a latter-day Renaissance connoisseur of fine literature, “from ennui in dipping here and there at random among the volumes of my library.” The reality was quite different, however. Poe wrote the pieces as fillers for newspapers when they were short of copy, and the sad fact of the matter was that he could never afford to assemble an extensive library of his own.

Poe's most important contributions to literary criticism were his theories concerning the short story and poetry. It has been suggested that his comments on the short story, which were scattered throughout reviews of books such as Nathaniel Hawthorne 's Twice-Told Tales ( 1837 ), helped establish the genre in its modern form. Poe's theory can be briefly summarized. He was concerned above all with the effect of his tale on the reader. This effect should, he thought, be single and unified. When readers finished the story they ought be left with a totality of impression, and every element of the story—character, style, tone, plot, and so on—should contribute to that impression. Stories too long to be read at a single sitting could not, in Poe's view, achieve such powerful and unified effects—hence the brevity of his own productions. Poe also advocated the Aristotelian unities of place, time, and action and put special emphasis on the opening and conclusion of his tales. In addition, he encouraged authors to concentrate exclusively on powerful emotional and aesthetic effects—the aim of fiction, he suggested, was not a didactic one. Finally, instead of providing the reader with a transparent upper current of meaning, he thought that the meaning of a tale should be indefinite and ambiguous.

Obviously, such ideas help us understand Poe's own short stories. The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque of the Red Death , for example, exhibit most of the above-mentioned characteristics. The theories of poetry that Poe adumbrated in book reviews and in lectures such as The Poetic Principle ( 1849 ) also help us understand his verse. In Poe's criticism there is a sense in which he was justifying his own practice as a creative writer and also attempting to create the kind of critical atmosphere in which his work would be favorably judged. Other writers, such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound , have also found this to be an effective strategy for achieving literary success. More broadly, it can be suggested that writing such as Poe's that lacks a definite content and an unambiguous message requires a theory in order to, as it were, support it and make it intelligible to the reader.

Poe's statements about poetry are similar to his pronouncements on the short story. Thus, in a review of Longfellow's Hyperion, A Romance ( 1839 ), he criticized its lack of a definite design and unified effect. Later, when commenting on the same author's Ballads and Other Poems ( 1841 ), he complained of Longfellow's didacticism and his failure to appreciate that the aim of poetry was not to instruct readers but to give them access to the world of supernal beauty. These ideas were expressed in a more theoretical form in The Poetic Principle , in which Poe criticized what he referred to as “the heresy of the didactic” and famously defined poetry as “the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.” These ideas proved to be extremely influential and were later adapted by “art-for-art's-sake” aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde and by symbolists such as Paul Valéry . It has also been suggested that Poe's emphasis on the words on the page, rather than on external considerations such as the writer's biography, make him an important precursor of the New Critics.

The Raven and Other Poems

Poe's most influential theoretical essay was probably “The Philosophy of Composition,” published in Graham's Magazine in 1846 . Before we turn to it, however, it is necessary to consider The Raven , the inception and writing of which the essay describes. The Raven , first published in the New York Evening Mirror in January 1845 , was an instant hit with the reading public. This allusion to pop music is apt because the immediate and enormous success of the poem has been accurately compared to that of a present-day song. On its publication, Poe became an overnight sensation, and thereafter he would always be associated with the poem. In a sense this association is unfortunate, because it obscures the fact that the poem, like many of Poe's short stories, is a dramatic production. The narrator, a young man mourning the death of his love Lenore, sits in his study musing “over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore”—a character and a setting typical of Poe. As well as being a dramatic poem, it is also an intensely theatrical one: the gloomy weather, the speaking bird, and props such as the purple curtain and the bust of Pallas could have been filched from the set of a Gothic drama. The young man's language, too, is distinctly stagy; at one point he remarks to the Raven: “ ‘Sir…or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore.’ ” The effect of such distinctly camp lines is complicated; you are not sure whether to laugh or scream. In the theater, and in the theatrical world of the poem, it is of course possible to do both.

Given the theatricality of the poem, it is fitting that Poe performed it, just as Dickens performed his novels, in public and private readings. During his recitations Poe once again proved that the theater was in his blood: he would dress in black, turn the lamps down low, and chant the poem in a melodious voice. The content of the poem is of course unrealistic; like a great drama, however, it creates its own vivid and convincing reality through its solemn rhymes and its stately rhythm.

Poe's raven has become as famous as those other birds of romanticism, Keats 's nightingale, Shelley 's skylark, and Coleridge's albatross. This is ironic because, in The Philosophy of Composition , he insisted that the poem was not a romantic one. The essay was written to demonstrate that, far from being a work of inspiration, the composition of The Raven proceeded with what he called “the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.” Along with metaphors drawn from mathematics, Poe typically (and revealingly) used images of acting to convey his detachment and self-consciousness during the writing of the poem.

Desiring to create a powerful effect of melancholy beauty that would appeal to both “the popular and the critical taste,” Poe tells us that he hit upon the saddest of all subjects: the death of a beautiful woman. This had, of course, been the subject of several of his earlier writings, such as the “marriage group” of stories in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque . In order to make the effect of the poem intense and unified, he decided that it should be limited to around one hundred lines and that it would include a refrain composed of the single, sonorous word, Nevermore . In the remainder of the essay Poe, who might be compared here to a magician who enjoys explaining away his tricks, goes on to make numerous comments of a similar nature.

It has been suggested that The Philosophy of Composition was a typical Poe hoax, and it is highly unlikely that it is a veracious account of the actual writing of The Raven . This, however, is largely irrelevant since the essay's importance lies in the fact that it offered a novel theory of composition and a new conception of the poet. Poe was attempting to replace the idea of the inspired poet that had been established by the ancients and by contemporaries such as Coleridge with his notion of the cold and calculating author. Once again, Poe's idea proved to be extremely influential in the history of literature. It informs Valéry's conception of the poet as an extremely self-conscious artist and T. S. Eliot's idea of the impersonal author.

It is doubtful that Poe's theories would have exercised such a powerful influence had he not also embodied and dramatized them in his writings. Perhaps even more important, he also offered himself as an archetype of the kind of author he was describing. Poe presented himself, in other words, as the exemplar of the self-conscious poet, an original that poets such as Baudelaire copied.

The Raven was republished in Poe's most substantial and famous collection of verse, The Raven and Other Poems , in 1845 . The book, which was prefaced by a statement that typically succeeded in being at once self-effacing and arrogant, contained revised versions of earlier compositions such as Israfel and poems that had never previously appeared in book form. Also included in the collection were several poems that had appeared, or would later appear, in Poe's short stories. (This is a striking demonstration of the homogeneous nature of Poe's oeuvre.) The most famous of these poems are The Haunted Palace , a powerful atmospheric poem improvised by Roderick Usher, and The Conqueror Worm , written by the eponymous hero of Ligeia . In the latter, angels are in a theater watching humankind play out its meaningless “motley drama” in which there is “much of Madness and more of Sin / And horror the soul of the plot.” Suddenly, “a blood-red thing” comes onto the stage. The lights go out, the curtain comes down, and death (for it is he) holds illimitable dominion over all. In its Gothic style, its dark vision of the world, and its theatricality, the poem is characteristic of its author and indeed reads like a microcosm of his oeuvre. One obvious point that can be made in connection with the poems that appeared in Poe's short stories is that they are dramatic works (a comparison here might be made with Robert Browning's monologues). Yet again, Poe displays his great gifts as a mimic or actor, and once more we are alerted to the difficulties of reading his work in an autobiographical light.

Many of Poe's finest poems were written after the publication of The Raven and were collected in volume form posthumously. These include the onomatopoeic The Bells , the beautiful ballad Annabel Lee , and the musical masterpiece Ulalume . This last poem is perhaps the most perfect example of Poe's ability to create a mysterious and unearthly atmosphere through repetition, assonance, and the use of languorous, usually trisyllabic, words. While discussing the poem, Poe is reported to have remarked that he deliberately wrote verse that would be unintelligible to the many. Ulalume is certainly hard to understand, but like the rest of Poe's verse, its ambiguity heightens rather than diminishes its power.

Poe, the Detective Story, and Science Fiction

Between the publication of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840 and his death in 1849 , Poe wrote numerous short stories. Among them are some of the most famous of all his writings, such as The Black Cat , The Tell-Tale Heart , The Cask of Amontillado , The Pit and the Pendulum , Hop-Frog , and The Masque of the Red Death . These stories have achieved the status of myths in the Western world; even those who have not read them know their plots. Because of the exigencies of space, and also because some of Poe's arabesque and grotesque productions have already been discussed, the focus here is on the stories that appeared in Tales ( 1845 ) and, in particular, on Poe's detective tales and science fiction. Although reviewers of Tales were, as usual, divided between those who described Poe as a great original and those who dismissed him as a showy and stylistically incompetent writer, the volume sold better than any of Poe's other publications.

Four detective stories (or “Tales of ratiocination,” as Poe called them) appeared in Tales : the prize-winning The Gold-Bug and three tales that featured the detective C. Auguste Dupin: The Purloined Letter , The Mystery of Marie Roget , and The Murders in the Rue Morgue . Although writers such as Voltaire, William Godwin , and Tobias Smollet had produced examples of what might be loosely termed crime fiction in the eighteenth century , it was these tales that established the modern short detective story as a definite and distinct form.

In The Murders in the Rue Morgue , the most famous and entertaining of Poe's detective stories, we immediately recognize the structure of the modern detective tale. A hideous and inexplicable crime is committed (the brutal murder of two women in a locked room in Paris), and all the evidence is placed before us. The police, who rely on cunning and instinct rather than rational method and imagination, are utterly baffled. Fortunately for them, an amateur genius, Dupin, is on hand to unravel the mystery. The tale (which in terms of its action is written backward) thus includes two stories: that of the crime and that of its solution and explanation by Dupin.

In creating Dupin, Poe invented the archetype of the modern detective. Among Dupin's descendents are Agatha Christie 's Hercule Poirot, G. K. Chesterton 's Father Brown, and of course Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes, who in one of Conan Doyle's stories actually discusses Dupin's merits. An eccentric and reclusive genius, Dupin is both a poetic visionary and a detached man of reason; he combines the attributes of the poet with those of the mathematician. In The Purloined Letter , where he unravels a mystery by identifying with the criminal, Dupin also displays an actor's power of empathy. He is, in other words, a glorified and aristocratic version of Poe. Poe also created the original of the detective's companion: a friend of average intelligence who narrates the tale and who acts, as it were, as the reader's representative within it. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue , the character is nameless; in later works by other authors he will be called Doctor Watson and Captain Hastings.

Poe is thus in large part responsible for one of the most popular and dominant forms of modern literature. After reading Poe, the French writers the Goncourt brothers believed that they had discovered “the literature of the twentieth century —love giving place to deductions…the interest of the story moved from the heart to the head…from the drama to the solution.” This prediction proved correct. Twentieth-century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges (who believed that Poe's ghost dictated detective stories to him) consciously imitated Poe, and the popularity and influence of the detective story has been, and still is, enormous. The broader point made by the Goncourt brothers concerning a literature of “the head” is also interesting. The detective story is essentially an intellectual exercise or game, and much of Poe's writing can be described in these terms. Perhaps it is this quality in his work that made it so popular and influential in the twentieth century .

The invention, or at the very least the foundation, of the modern detective story is surely Poe's greatest contribution to world literature. He has also been hailed as the father of modern science fiction. The extent to which Poe established the genre is, however, a matter of controversy. Those who have argued for his formative influence point to the futuristic, technological, and rationalistic elements of his work. It is perhaps better to approach the question through a consideration of Poe's influence, which was enormous. Poe's science fiction stories profoundly influenced later masters of the genre such as Jules Verne , H. G. Wells , and Isaac Asimov (who conflated the science fiction tale and the detective story). Among the Poe stories that have been classed as science fiction are Hans Phaall , the eponymous hero's account of his nineteen-day balloon journey to the moon, and the futuristic Mellonta Tauta . Two stories in Tales , The Colloquy of Monos and Una and The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion , have also been classified as science fiction tales.

Both are dialogues between disembodied spirits set sometime in the distant future. The dialogue form, which derives from ancients such as Lucian and Plato , was very popular in Poe's time among satirical writers such as Thomas Love Peacock, Giacomo Leopardi , and William Blake . Poe also used it for satirical purposes; in these dialogues he criticizes his age for, among other things, its exclusive belief in science. Poe's argument with science was in some respects a typically romantic one. Science and industrialization, it is suggested in The Colloquy , have given humans the false idea that they have dominion over nature and have devalued the poetic intellect.

Yet Poe went further than this conventional romantic position and challenged science's claims to objectivity and its emphasis on empiricism. So far as objectivity is concerned, reading hoax stories such as Hans Phaall leaves the impression that scientific explanations of the world are not unlike stories and that science itself may be a kind of fiction. Regarding the limitations of empiricism, Poe believed that the discovery of facts was not enough and that it is what is done with them that is important. It requires, Poe suggests, a visionary rather than a scientist to sort, connect, and shape them into theories. This visionary figure, who is both poet and mathematician, appears throughout Poe's writings. Sometimes he is Dupin, the great detective; at other times he is Poe, the theorist of poetic composition and the author of the scientific prose poem Eureka .

Poe evidently believed that Eureka , published in 1848 , was his greatest achievement: “I have no desire to live since I have done ‘Eureka,’ ” he wrote to his mother-in-law. “I could accomplish nothing more.” Indeed, he appears to have regarded it as nothing less than the solution to the secret of the universe. It is most unfortunate for humanity, therefore, that Eureka makes extremely dull reading and is very difficult to understand. One of the best attempts at a summary is contained in Kenneth Silverman 's ( 1991 ) excellent biography of Poe. Suffice it to say here that Eureka , subtitled as “Essay on the material and the spiritual universe” predicted, among other things, the annihilation and the rebirth of the universe.

Although Eureka has traditionally been regarded as a distinct work within the Poe canon, there are many connections between it and the rest of his oeuvre. Passages in short stories such as Mellonta Tauta prefigure some of its contents. In his preface to the book Poe described it as a poem rather than a “scientific” work. “I offer this Book of Truths,” he wrote, adapting Keats's famous line, “not in the character of a Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it True.”

The rather confused critical reception that Eureka received also made it a typical Poe production. Some reviewers read it as an elaborate hoax in the manner of Hans Phaall ; others considered it to be a prolix and labored satire of scientific discourse. Certain critics regarded it as a brilliant and sincere work of genius, yet it was also dismissed as arrant fudge. Such diverse and extreme reactions to Poe's work have already been noted; they testify to the fact that, whatever else his writing is, it is impossible to ignore.

Poe's Influence

When Poe died in Baltimore on 7 October 1849 from causes that are still the subject of debate, some commentators predicted that his works would be forgotten. They could not have been more wrong, as his books are currently read throughout the world and his influence on world literature has been extraordinary. With their consummate artistry, their self-consciousness, and their heavy atmosphere of decay, Poe's poems and tales (along with his literary persona and his theories) inspired Decadent and symbolist writers of the nineteenth century . Baudelaire, among whose earliest works were translations of Poe's stories, famously died with a copy of Poe's tales beside his bed. Mallarmé, Verlaine, Dowson, and Wilde also worshipped at the Poe shrine.

At the end of the nineteenth century , science fiction writers such as Verne and Wells and authors of detective stories such as Conan Doyle acknowledged their profound debt to Poe. It was Conan Doyle who remarked that Poe's tales “have been so pregnant with suggestion…that each is a root from which a whole literature has developed.” In the twentieth century Poe's influence was no less profound. His short stories were of immense importance to authors as diverse as Kafka, H. P. Lovecraft (who referred to his tales of horror as “Poe stories”), Vladimir Nabokov , and Stephen King. He has also had a powerful effect on every other branch of the arts. Painters such as René Magritte and Edmund Dulac were fascinated by him, and film directors such as Roger Corman and Alfred Hitchcock also took inspiration from his writings.

Poe continues to inspire and enchant people today. In the future he will no doubt attract as much hostile criticism as he has in the past, but he will survive because he will continue to be read. And despite all of the faults and all of the fudge in his writings, it is hard, in conclusion, to think of another American writer who has so drastically altered the landscape of the popular imagination or who has had such a powerful effect on his fellow artists.

Selected Works

• Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)
• Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829)
• Poems by Edgar A. Poe (1831)
• The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)
• Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840)
• The Raven and Other Poems (1845)
• Tales (1845)
• Eureka (1848)
• Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1969–1978)
• The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe (1976)
• The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings (1986)
• Poetry, Tales, and Selected Essays (1996)

Further Reading

• Carlson, Eric W. , ed. The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Criticism since 1829 . Ann Arbor, Mich., 1966. Collection of all of the famous essays on Poe, including those by T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Walt Whitman.
• Carlson, Eric W. , ed. A Companion to Poe Studies . Westport, Conn., 1996. A comprehensive collection of modern appraisals of every aspect of Poe's life and work.
• Hayes, Kevin J. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe . Cambridge, 2002. Excellent and wide-ranging collection of late-twentieth-century Poe scholarship.
• Hyneman, Esther F. Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Bibliography of Books and Articles in English, 1827–1973 . Boston, 1974.
• Silverman, Kenneth . Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance . New York, 1991. Its psychoanalytic explanations are sometimes unconvincing, but it is easily the best biography available.
• Walker, I. M. , ed. Edgar Allan Poe: The Critical Heritage . New York, 1986. Anthology of contemporary reviews of Poe's work.

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Michael - Yänariskwa’ / Solitary Mind

A conversation with edgar allan poe.

In the teeming metropolis of Richmond, Virginia, I was bestowed with the singular honor of engaging in discourse with the enigmatic Edgar Allan Poe. Renowned for his tales of the arabesque and beautifully enduring, Poe was on the cusp of a grand relocation to Philadelphia, armed with grandiose plans for a literary periodical, The Stylus. As I made my approach to Poe’s abode, the Old Stone House, I was struck by the stark contrast between the city’s vivacity and the somber undertones of Poe’s oeuvre. The house, a silent sentinel of Poe’s deep-seated ties with Richmond, bore mute testimony to his turbulent history. Poe received me with a courteous inclination of his head, his eyes mirroring a wellspring of intellect and creativity. We ensconced ourselves in a tranquil nook, and I commenced my inquiry into his forthcoming ventures. “I am poised to inaugurate a periodical in Philadelphia,” Poe commenced, his voice a steady cadence of confidence. “It shall bear the name, The Stylus.” The Stylus, he elucidated, was not merely another publication. It was envisioned as a platform for the exhibition of the finest American literature, a lighthouse of creativity and intellect. Poe’s vision was unambiguous– he desired The Stylus to be a periodical of unparalleled quality, featuring works that would engage the intellect and stir the soul. “I am of the firm belief that America stands on the precipice of a literary revolution,” Poe continued. “The Stylus shall serve as the catalyst for this transformation.” His words were imbued with fervor and resolve. Despite the obstacles he had encountered in securing financial patrons and contributors, Poe remained steadfast. His faith in his vision was unwavering. As our conversation meandered towards his impending move to Philadelphia, there was a discernible shift in Poe’s demeanor. A sense of anticipation, a spark of excitement was palpable. Philadelphia, he was convinced, was the ideal locale for his ambitious endeavor. “The city is a bustling center of intellectual activity,” Poe declared. “Its dynamic literary scene will provide the perfect milieu for The Stylus.” As our discourse drew to a close, I found myself in awe of Poe’s resilience and determination. In the face of adversity, he was prepared to embark on a new journey, propelled by his passion for literature and his vision for The Stylus. As I took my leave of the Old Stone House, I was filled with a profound sense of respect for Edgar Allan Poe. His ambitious plans for The Stylus, coupled with his staunch determination, painted a portrait of a man who was not merely a writer, but a visionary.

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Mood in the Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

This essay about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” focuses on how Poe masterfully crafts atmosphere to immerse readers in a somber and melancholic journey. Through meticulous lexical selection, vivid imagery, and the introduction of the raven, Poe creates an eerie and captivating ambiance that harmonizes with the poem’s themes of grief and despair. The essay illustrates how atmosphere becomes a dynamic force, shaping readers’ emotional responses and enriching the narrative’s resonance. It highlights Poe’s skill in evoking multifaceted emotions and establishes “The Raven” as a quintessential example of the power of atmosphere in literature, showcasing Poe’s prowess as a luminary in American literature.

How it works

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” stands as a paradigmatic illustration of how atmosphere can mold a literary work, transmuting it into a profound and unsettling journey for readers. Within this verse, Poe adeptly forges a somber, melancholic atmosphere that envelops the reader from the onset. Through his lexical selection, the backdrop, and the rhythmic cadence of the poem, Poe crafts an ambiance that is both eerie and captivating, harmonizing seamlessly with the poem’s motifs of grief and desolation.

“The Raven” commences with the solitary narrator in his chamber, enervated and fatigued, contemplating numerous curious and archaic volumes of forgotten wisdom.

It unfolds on a “dreary” December midnight, with the winter’s gloom setting the stage. The ambiance is not a mere backdrop but an active participant in the atmospheric orchestration. The desolate, shadowy night, coupled with the narrator’s solitude, immediately envelops the reader in a pall of melancholy. The setting mirrors the internal tumult of the narrator, who mourns the loss of his cherished Lenore. The chilling breeze and the eerie darkness outside mirror his haunted ruminations and plummeting spirits.

Poe amplifies this atmosphere through his meticulous lexical choices. His deployment of sonic devices, including rhyme and alliteration, contributes to the overarching solemn and suspenseful ambiance. The recurrent “r” sounds in words such as “dreary,” “weary,” “remember,” “December,” and “morrow” engender a resonant effect that harmonizes with the theme of enduring remembrance and lingering sorrow. This auditory patterning transcends mere ornamentation, operating on a psychological plane to underscore the cyclical and inexorable nature of the narrator’s anguish and fixation.

Furthermore, Poe employs vivid imagery to ensnare the reader further within the poem’s atmosphere. Depictions of the “silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain” evoke a tactile and visual experience, suggesting a spectral presence or perchance the flitting wings of the raven as it enters the chamber. The hue purple, often connotative of the supernatural and enigmatic, contributes to the poem’s gloomy and enigmatic aura. Each facet in Poe’s descriptive arsenal appears meticulously selected to augment the mood of foreboding and despair.

The advent of the raven itself marks a pivotal juncture in the evolution of the poem’s atmosphere. The avian creature, characterized as majestic and bewitching, alights upon a bust of Pallas above the narrator’s door. The raven’s arrival imbues the mood with a novel dimension—what commences as sorrow gradually transmutes into a deeper, more ominous sensation. The raven’s incessant repetition of the word “Nevermore” assumes a sinister refrain, resonating throughout the poem and within the recesses of the reader’s psyche. This refrain serves not merely as a symbol of inevitability but also as a stark reminder of the narrator’s loss and his inexorable fate to mourn ad infinitum.

Through “The Raven,” Poe exemplifies how atmosphere transcends its conventional role as a peripheral element in literature, emerging as a dynamic and metamorphic force. It shapes the reader’s affective response and amplifies the narrative’s resonance. Poe’s verse remains a captivating testament to the fusion of language, milieu, and symbolism in crafting an immersive ambiance that not only enriches the thematic underpinnings of a literary work but also leaves an enduring impression on the reader.

In summation, the atmosphere in “The Raven” emerges as a pivotal facet that Poe manipulates with finesse. It is not solely the gloom and frigidity of the December night that ensnares readers, but rather the manner in which Poe unites form and substance to enshroud the reader in the narrator’s shadowy, despondent realm. The adept manipulation of atmosphere in this verse serves as a quintessential exemplar of how a proficient author can evoke multifaceted emotional responses, establishing Edgar Allan Poe as a luminary within the annals of American literature. For those delving into Poe’s oeuvre or the role of atmosphere in literary compositions, “The Raven” proffers a wealth of material for scrutiny and contemplation, showcasing how atmosphere can be as pivotal to a work as its plot or personages.

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Leo Tolstoy: The Complete Collection includes unabridged recordings of Leo Tolstoy's 3 timeless novels; all his major novellas and short stories; and 4 renowned works of non-fiction in one audiobook, all read by Audie Award-winning narrators.

Well worth the read!

• By Lawnie on 04-26-24

The Complete Sherlock Holmes

• The Heirloom Collection

By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• Narrated by: Simon Vance
• Length: 58 hrs and 4 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,763
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 7,981
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 7,968

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales are rightly ranked among the seminal works of mystery and detective fiction. Included in this collection are all four full-length Holmes novels and more than forty short masterpieces - from the inaugural adventure A Study in Scarlet to timeless favorites like “The Speckled Band” and more. At the center of each stands the iconic figure of Holmes - brilliant, eccentric, and capable of amazing feats of deductive reasoning.

A Table of Contents & Audible Part/Chapter Notes

• By SantaFePainter on 11-18-13

The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection

• Narrated by: Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone
• Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 614
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 416
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 413

Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone brilliantly interpret twenty of Edgar Allan Poe's most chilling stories and poems - an unforgettably intense listening experience!

Excellent performance, poor formatting.

• By tom on 10-24-11

M.R. James: The Complete Ghost Stories Collection

By: M. R. James

• Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
• Length: 18 hrs and 42 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 89
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 68
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 68

For the first time, the complete works of M. R. James are available to download in one collection. This unabridged collection of all M.R. James' ghost stories includes tales from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary , More Ghost Stories , A Thin Ghost and Others , and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories . It is expertly read by award-winning narrator Jonathan Keeble.

• By Mardou Fox on 08-09-22

Edgar Allan Poe - The Complete Stories and Poems

• Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble, Peter Noble
• Length: 36 hrs and 34 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 9
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 7
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 7

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

The Perfect Poe Companion

• By Anonymous User on 05-26-22

The Haunting of Hill House

By: Shirley Jackson

• Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
• Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 10,609
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,429
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 9,433

Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House.

Well written horror tale

• By C K White on 02-11-14

Slayers: A Buffyverse Story

• By: Christopher Golden, Amber Benson
• Narrated by: Amber Benson, Charisma Carpenter, James Charles Leary, and others
• Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
• Original Recording
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,348
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 2,198
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,197

Original cast members from the beloved TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer , reunite for an all-new adventure about connections that never die—even if you bury them. A decade has passed since the epic final battle that concluded Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV). The game-changing spell that gave power to all potential Slayers persists. With new Slayers constantly emerging, things are looking grim for the bad guys.

A dream come true

• By Anonymous User on 10-12-23

By: Christopher Golden , and others

Necronomicon

• Narrated by: Richard Powers, Bronson Pinchot, Stephen R. Thorne, and others
• Length: 21 hrs and 1 min
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 7,009
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,365
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,353

Originally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s, H. P. Lovecraft's astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when first published. This tome brings together all of Lovecraft's harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were when first released.

This has bugged me for a while...

• By mike on 06-23-16

Mark Twain - The Complete Novels

By: Mark Twain

• Narrated by: Lee Howard
• Length: 58 hrs and 33 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 115
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 94
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 94

Here you will find the complete novels of Mark Twain: 1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Starts at Chapter 1, 2. The Prince and the Pauper Starts at Chapter 37, 3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Starts at Chapter 70, 4. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Starts at Chapter 113, 5. The American Claimant Starts at Chapter 158, 6. Tom Sawyer Abroad Starts at Chapter 184, 7. Pudd'nhead Wilson Starts at Chapter 197, 8. Tom Sawyer, Detective Starts at Chapter 219, 9. A Horse's Tale Starts at Chapter 230, 10. The Mysterious Stranger Starts at Chapter 245.

• 3 out of 5 stars

Content; GREAT! Performance.. .not so much😁

• By brian deis on 01-09-20

The Price of Fear: 20 Tales of Suspense Told by Vincent Price

• A BBC Radio 4 Vintage Horror Series
• By: William Ingram, Richard Davies, Maurice Travers, and others
• Narrated by: Vincent Price, Maurice Denham, Annette Crosbie, and others
• Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 63
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 50
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 50

Twenty tales of terror and suspense, brought to you by sinister storyteller Vincent Price. Horror legend Vincent Price presents an anthology of eerie, unsettling tales with a devilish twist - some purportedly based on his own adventures, others narrated by him in his own inimitable style.

pure cozy spooky bliss

• By Luke on 03-25-22

By: William Ingram , and others

The Fall of the House of Usher

• Narrated by: William Roberts
• Length: 50 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 259
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 229
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 226

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

Well read narration!

• By Robert E. Wilkins on 01-26-19

Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe

• By: Thomas Ligotti, Jeff VanderMeer - foreword
• Narrated by: Jon Padgett, Linda Jones
• Length: 21 hrs and 54 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 68
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 51
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 51

Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer , and his second, Grimscribe , permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.

Incredible!

• By Erik McHatton on 02-27-23

By: Thomas Ligotti , and others

Something Wicked This Way Comes

By: Ray Bradbury

• Narrated by: Christian Rummel
• Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,214
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,633
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,638

A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery.

It's so creepy

• By Midwestbonsai on 11-14-14

• The Murders in the Rue Morgue
• Narrated by: Kerry Shale
• Length: 1 hr and 29 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 128
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 106
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 107

This is a story from the Murders in the Rue Morgue (The Dupin Stories) collection. Auguste Dupin, investigator extraordinaire, was the remarkable creation of Edgar Allan Poe. Written in the 1840s, Poe presented the acutely observant, shrewd but idiosyncratic character who, with his chronicler, provided the inspiration for the more famous Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Suspense at its finest

• By Webb Patterson on 04-16-18

The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories (AmazonClassics Edition)

• Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
• Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 40
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 35
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 35

Edgar Allan Poe elevated the gothic story, developed the unreliable narrator, recast psychological terror, and reveled in both the horror and the supernal beauty of death. From Poe's rich, unrivaled imagination comes a collection of his most masterful works, including "The Black Cat", "The Fall of the House of Usher", and, of course, "The Tell-Tale Heart". Each story explores morbid themes of grief, greed, fear, and guilt, and together they embody Poe's grotesque obsessions...even the dread of being buried alive.

Didn't fully track it, but still, I enjoyed it!

• By Jennifer Greenlees on 10-02-20

Publisher's summary

This is the complete collection of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, poems, novels and essays, read by Audie Award-winning actors Peter Noble and Jonathan Keeble.

This collection contains more than 160 of Poe's short stories, poems, his two novels, and a selection of his essays, including:

• 'The Raven'
• 'The Black Cat'
• 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
• 'The Gold-Bug'
• 'The Masque of the Red Death'
• 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'
• 'The Pit and the Pendulum'
• 'The Tell-Tale Heart'
• 'Annabel Lee'
• 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar'
• 'William Wilson'
• 'The Valley of Unrest'
• 'The Village Street'
• 'The Cask of Amontillado'
• 'The Haunted Palace'
• 'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket'
• 'The Philosophy of Composition'
• 'The Philosophy of Furniture'
• 'The Poetic Principle'
• 'The Rationale of Verse'
• Plus many more!
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Categories: Literature & Fiction

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Edgar allan poe.

• The End and the Death: Volume III
• Road of Skulls

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Edgar Allan Poe - The Complete Works Collection

• Narrated by: Philippe Duquenoy
• Length: 48 hrs and 26 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 464
• Performance 3.5 out of 5 stars 389
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 381

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most prolific authors of his time, eventually gaining recognition for his tales of horror and his uncanny ability to paint a macabre picture with words. The Complete Works Collection of Edgar Allan Poe contains over 150 stories and poems, separated into individual chapters, including all of Poe's most notorious works such as The Raven , Annabel Lee , A Dream Within a Dream , Lenore , The Tell-Tale Heart , and many more.

Would recommend to anyone!!!

• By Gail Blackwell on 03-14-18

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1

• Narrated by: Nicholas Stikoski
• Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 56
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 52
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 50

A collection of classic works by Edgar Allan Poe, American author, poet, editor, and literary critic. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Poor narration hurts these Poe classics

• By Jeremy C. Kuban on 11-29-12

Dombey and Son

By: Charles Dickens

• Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
• Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 123
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 66

In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.

Perfect pair

• By Philip on 03-25-08

The Bondwoman's Narrative

• By: Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
• Narrated by: Anna Deavere Smith
• Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 189
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 105
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 106

An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring tale of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.

• 1 out of 5 stars

Poor reading of an important book

• By Hilary on 11-15-04

By: Hannah Crafts , and others

What Is Man?

• Narrated by: Carl Reiner
• Length: 3 hrs
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 60

What Is Man? appears in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a romantic young idealist and an elderly cynic, who debate issues of mankind, such as whether man is free to act or is more of a machine, whether personal merit is meaningless given how the environment shapes us, and whether man truly has impulses other than to pursue pleasure and avoid pain.

I'm 21, this shit was crazy. But I loved it.

• By Trina on 10-16-17

The Coming Race

By: Edward Bulwer Lytton

• Narrated by: William Hope
• Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 86
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 77
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 76

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's book is ostensibly a work of Science Fiction. It deals with an underground race of advanced beings, masters of Vril energy - a strange power that can both heal and destroy - who intend to leave their subterranean existence and conquer the world. But the book has been seen by many as a barely concealed account of Hidden Wisdom, a theory that has attracted many strange bed-fellows, including the French author Louis Jacolliot, the Polish explorer Ferdinand Ossendowsky, and Adolf Hitler.

dated - worked to get through it

• By Cat Lover who doesn't work out on 10-10-19

The Vampyre

By: John Polidori

• Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
• Length: 59 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 252
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 228
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 226

Young, impressionable Aubrey is fascinated by the enigmatic Lord Ruthven, and accompanies him on a tour to Europe. But Aubrey develops a growing distaste for Lord Ruthven’s sinister and grotesque conduct - especially as it concerns human blood. This novella, penned during that tempestuous night in Switzerland amongst such notables as Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley, served as the great inspiration for Bram Stoker to create Dracula .

Kicking it oldschool

• By Rebecca on 08-13-12

Self Reliance

By: Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Narrated by: Alana Munro
• Length: 1 hr and 20 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 1,015
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 857
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 847

The most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." This essay is a considered a watershed moment in which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. An American classic.

Don't buy this

• By Leah L on 07-31-16

Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
• Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 116
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 100

Here in one volume are both the Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series from one of the most influential philosophers in American history. Although Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps America’s most famous philosopher, did not wish to be referred to as a transcendentalist, he is nevertheless considered the founder of this major movement of nineteenth-century American thought. Emerson was influenced by a liberal religious training; theological study; personal contact with the Romanticists Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; and a strong indigenous sense of individualism and self-reliance.

Riggenbach's Essays, Not Emerson's

• By Jake Behm on 12-01-15

The Prince and the Pauper

• Narrated by: Steve West
• Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 152
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 129
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 129

They look alike, but they live in very different worlds. Tom Canty, impoverished and abused by his father, is fascinated with royalty. Edward Tudor, heir to the throne of England, is kind and generous but wants to run free and play in the river - just once. How insubstantial their differences truly are becomes clear when a chance encounter leads to an exchange of clothing - and roles. The pauper finds himself caught up in the pomp and folly of the royal court, and the prince wanders horror-stricken through the lower strata of English society.

Wonderful author, terrific narrator, splendid book

• By Rahni on 10-01-17

The Birthmark

By: Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Narrated by: Walter Covell
• Length: 42 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 73
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 64
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 64

Hawthorne approached the Romantic notion of the ability of science to destroy art (or beauty) in the form of fictive "horror stories" of biological research out of control. This story is the best of that group. A devoted scientist marries a beautiful woman with a single physical flaw: a birthmark on her face. Aylmer becomes obsessed with the imperfection and his attempts to remove it via his scientific skills, thus rendering his bride perfect.

• 2 out of 5 stars

Bland uninspired

• By Holcomb on 10-02-12

By: Sir Walter Scott

• Narrated by: David Rintoul
• Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 137
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 118
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 117

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott is an enthralling tale of love, war and divided loyalties. Taking place during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the novel tells the story of proud English officer Edward Waverley. After being posted to Dundee, Edward eventually befriends chieftain of the Highland Clan Mac-Ivor and falls in love with his beautiful sister Flora. He then renounces his former loyalties in order actively to support Scotland in open rebellion against the Union with England. The book depicts stunning, romantic panoramas of the Highlands.

• By Tad Davis on 04-12-18

Measure for Measure

By: William Shakespeare

• Narrated by: Royal Shakespeare Company
• Length: 2 hrs and 27 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 44
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 28
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 27

A performance of the tragi-comedy by the Royal Shakespeare Company. When a young woman is offered the choice of saving a man's life at the price of her own chastity, what should she do? The political and moral corruption of Vienna has driven Duke Vincentio into hiding while his deputy governor, Angelo, is left to revive the old discipline of civic authority. Angelo's first act is to imprison Claudio, a young nobleman who has gotten his betrothed, Juliet, with child.

Highly recommended

• By Todd on 10-16-08

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror

By: Robert Louis Stevenson

• Narrated by: Michael Kitchen
• Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 200
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 163
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 162

This dark psychological fantasy is more than a moral tale. It is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution and criminality, and the secret lives behind Victorian propriety, to create a unique form of urban Gothic.

The Dark Human Heart

• By Jefferson on 01-30-11

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

By: Henry Fielding

• Narrated by: Kenneth Danzinger
• Length: 35 hrs and 53 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 260
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 204
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 203

A foundling of mysterious parentage, Tom Jones is brought up by the benevolent and wealthy Squire Allworthy as his own son. Tom falls in love with the beautiful and unattainable Sophia Western, a neighbor’s daughter, whose marriage has already been arranged. When Tom’s sexual misadventures around the countryside get him banished, he sets out to make his fortune and find his true identity.

Well read, many accents, older recording

• By Elizabeth on 12-16-10

The Confessions

By: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Length: 30 hrs
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 57
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 49
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 47

Dr. Johnson may have been correct in saying that “Rousseau was a very bad man,” but none can argue that his ideas are among the most influential in all of world history. It was Rousseau, the father of the romantic movement, who was responsible for introducing at least two modern day thoughts that pervade academia. The Confessions is Rousseau’s landmark autobiography. Both brilliant and flawed, it is nonetheless beautifully written and remains one of the most moving human documents in all of literature.

Extraordinary in its ordinariness...

• By Varni-Maree on 08-28-12

Vicar of Wakefield

By: Oliver Goldsmith

• Narrated by: Patrick Tull
• Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 71
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 46
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 49

The simple village vicar, Mr. Primrose, is living with his wife and six children in complete tranquility until unexpected calamities force them to weather one hilarious adventure after another. Goldsmith plays out this classic comedy of manners with a light, ironic touch that is irresistibly charming.

Snidely Whiplash Ravishes Hapless Maidens

• By Joseph R on 12-26-09

The Roman Way

By: Edith Hamilton

• Narrated by: Nadia May
• Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 193
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 146
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 146

Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.

• By steve on 04-25-11

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The keys to. Given!

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Close your eyes and see the future. Radio often explored the issues of the day by imagining the days to come - and never did it better than in the stories you'll hear in this collection! From 2000 Plus to Dimension X , this is Great Radio Science Fiction !

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By: Robert Heinlein , and others

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Gothic master Edgar Allan Poe's complete works are collected in this multivolume set by Blackstone Audio. Here are his short stories, detective fiction, and poems in all their mysterious and macabre glory. Also included are Poe's literary reviews and editorial musings, comprising an often caustic analysis of the poetry, drama, and fiction of the period.

no chapters

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Story Title List

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• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 7
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 7
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 7

The historians of ancient Greece were pioneers of a new literary craft; their work stands among the world’s most enduring and important legacies and forms the foundation of a major modern discipline. This easy-to-follow edition includes new and newly revised translations of selections from Herodotus - often called the “father of history” - Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plutarch, the four greatest Greek innovators of historical narrative. Here the listener will find their most important, and most widely taught, passages collected in a single volume. 

Great material....

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By: Mary Lefkowitz , and others

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• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 16
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EXCELLENT SUPERB NARRATOR

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• Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
• Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 2
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 2
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 2

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of A.A. Milne's first two collections of Pooh stories, Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. Adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood include rescuing Pooh from a tight situation, discovering the North Pole and saving Piglet from the Great Flood in an upturned umbrella. And then we return to the Hundred Acre Wood in A.A. Milne's second collection of Pooh stories, The House at Pooh Corner. Joining them for the first time is the bounciest of them all, Tigger, who leads us into unforgettable adventures.

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• Story 5 out of 5 stars 25

Set in a small English village during 1812, this classic novel is one of the greatest love stories ever told! A poor country squire is trying to find husbands for his five daughters. When one of them, Elizabeth, meets rich Mr. Darcy at a dance, they don’t find much in common. But during the next few months, they overcome their differences and fall in love.

A classic reborn

• By Heather Leigh on 05-07-22

The Maine Woods

By: Henry David Thoreau

• Narrated by: Duncan Brownlehe
• Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 27
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 21
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 21

Thoreau gives an account of three canoe and hiking journeys - by himself and with others - through the mostly uninhabited forests of Maine in the 1850s. Identifying birds, trees and plants by their botanical as well as their common names, he also records the Indian names of lakes, rivers and plants. He investigates the connections between waterways and trails, and provides detail on camping, fishing and hunting in the woods, using whatever is at hand. Extolling the beauty of the wilds that he encounters, Thorough’s narrative is also imbued with elements of his philosophy.

Listened to this at least 3 times

• By Teagan MacEachern on 01-30-23

• By: Neil Gaiman - contributor, George R. R. Martin - editor, Gillian Flynn - contributor, and others
• Narrated by: Janis Ian, Gwendoline Christie, Roy Dotrice, and others
• Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 2,874
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,567
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 2,561

If you’re a fan of fiction that is more than just black and white, this latest story collection from number-one New York Times best-selling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R. R. Martin himself offers a brand-new A Game of Thrones tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.

A fun way to sample Authors- More Rothfuss Please!

• By gc on 08-31-14

By: Neil Gaiman - contributor , and others

Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Essays

• Narrated by: Peter Noble
• Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
• Overall 0 out of 5 stars 0
• Performance 0 out of 5 stars 0
• Story 0 out of 5 stars 0

Around the World in 80 Books

By: David Damrosch

• Narrated by: David Damrosch
• Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 28
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 25
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 25

Inspired by Jules Verne’s hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University’s department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic’s restrictions on travel by exploring 80 exceptional books from around the globe.

Ruined by writer narrating

• By Avals Sher on 01-21-24

On the Origin of Species

By: Charles Darwin

• Narrated by: Peter Wickham
• Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 330
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 279
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 275

Perhaps the most influential science book ever written, On the Origin of Species has continued to fascinate for more than a century after its initial publication. Its controversial theory that populations evolve and adapt through a process known as natural selection led to heated scientific, philosophical, and religious debate, revolutionizing every discipline in its wake. With its clear, concise, and surprisingly enjoyable prose, On the Origin of Species is both captivating and edifying.

Wonderful book - tough listen

• By Henry on 03-22-18

What listeners say about The Edgar Allan Poe Complete Works Collection - Stories, Poems, Novels, and Essays

• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.3 out of 5.0
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.4 out of 5.0
• 4 out of 5 stars 4.1 out of 5.0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

Forevermore…

…will I remember the writing and intellectual contributions of Poe to the world. Prior to hearing about his fascinating involvement in early American metaphysical circles, I’d only known his more popular horror stories and poems. He is so much deeper and I will never forget several of the longer works, like the epic adventure of Arthur Gordan Pym of Nantucket. Narration is beautiful. I’m not a big fan of poetry, even from a great mind like EEP, so can’t say much about that.;

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7 people found this helpful

• Jesse Richards

Now THIS is the Poe collection to get!

Fully, properly indexed, featuring probably the best audiobook performances I’ve ever heard, by two readers who fully understand and authentically convey the intensity of the work. If you have any doubts start right with Ligeia and you’ll be hooked! There is no need for any other Poe audio collection besides this one.

11 people found this helpful

• Anonymous User

The Finest Poe Collection

This collection, expertly read with true understanding and enthusiasm by Jonathan Keeble, is one of my favorite things I've listened to on Audible. Poe is an incredible storyteller and it's a pleasure to be taken through all his stories in safe hands. Unlike many others, this collection is FULLY INDEXED so you can easily find which story/poem you are looking for. A great bonus. FULL CHAPTER LISTING Track 1: Opening Credits Short Stories Track 2: A Descent Into The Maelstrom Track 3: A Predicament Track 4: A Tale of Jerusalem Track 5: A Tale of the Ragged Mountains Track 6: Berenice Track 7: Bon Bon Track 8: Diddling Track 9: Eleonora Track 10: Four Beasts in One Track 11: Hop Frog Track 12: How to Write a Blackwood Article Track 13: King Pest Track 14: Landors Cottage Track 15: Ligeia Track 16: Lionising Track 17: Loss of Breath Track 18: Mellonta Tauta Track 19: Mesmeric_Revelation Track 20: Metzengerstein Track 21: Morella Track 22: Manuscript Found in a Bottle Track 23: Mysification Track 24: Never Bet the Devil Your Head Track 25: Shadow, A Parable Track 26: Silence, A Fable Track 27: Some Words with a Mummy Track 28: The Angel of the Odd Track 29: The Assignation Track 30: The Black Cat Track 31: The Business Man Track 32: The Cask of Amontillado Track 33: The Colloquy of Monos and Una Track 34: The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion Track 35: The Devil in the Belfry Track 36: The Domain of Arnheim Track 37: The Duc de Lomelette Track 38: The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar Track 39: The Fall of the House of Usher Track 40: The Gold Bug, Part 1 Track 41: The Gold Bug, Part 2 Track 42: The Imp of the Pervers Track 43: The Island of the Fay Track 44: The Lighthouse Track 45: The Literary Life of Thingum Bob Esq Track 46: The Man of the Crowd Track 47: The Man That Was Used Up Track 48: The Masque of the Red Death Track 49: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Part 1 Track 50: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Part 2 Track 51: The Mystery of Marie Roget, Part 1 Track 52: The Mystery of Marie Roget, Part 2 Track 53: The Oblong Box Track 54: The Oval Portrait Track 55: The Pit and the Pendulum Track 56: The Power of Words Track 57: The Premature Burial Track 58: The Purloined Letter Track 59: The Spectacles Track 60: The Sphinx Track 61: The System of Dr Tar and Professor Feather Track 62: The Tell-Tale Heart Track 63: The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade Track 64: The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, Part 1 Track 65: The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, Part 2 Track 66: Thou Art The Man Track 67: Three Sundays in a Week Track 68: Von Kempelen and his Discovery Track 69: Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling Track 70: William Wilson Track 71: Xing a Paragrab Poems Track 72: A Campaign Song Track 73: A Dream Track 74: A Dream Within a Dream Track 75: A Paean Track 76: A Valentine Track 77: An Acrostic Track 78: Al Aaraaf Track 79: Alone Track 80: An Enigma Track 81: Annabel Lee Track 82: Beloved Physician Track 83: Bridal Ballad Track 84: Deep in Eart Track 85: The Divine Right of Kings Track 86: Dream land Track 87: Eldorado Track 88: Elizabeth Track 89: Enigma Track 90: Epigram for Wall Street Track 91: Eulalie A Song Track 92: Evangeline Track 93: Evening Star Track 94: Fairy Land Track 95: Fanny Track 96: For Annie Track 97: Hymn Track 98: Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius Track 99: Imitation Track 100: In Youth I Have Known One Track 101: Impromptu To Kate Carol Track 102: Israfel Track 103: Latin Hmyn Track 104: Lenore Track 105: Lines on Ale Track 106: Lines Written on an Album Track 107: Lines on Joe Locke Track 108: May Queeen Ode Track 109: O Tempora O Mores Track 110: Poetry Track 111: Romance Track 112: Serenade Track 113: Silence Track 114: The Sleeper Track 115: Song Track 116: Sonnet to Science Track 117: Sonnnet to Zante Track 118: Spirits of the Dead Track 119: Spiritual Song Track 120: Stanzas Track 121: Tamerlane Track 122: The Bells Track 123: The City in the Sea Track 124: The Coliseum Track 125: The Conqueror Worm Track 126: The Forest Reverie Track 127: The Happiest Day Track 128: The Haunted Palace Track 129: The Lake Track 130: The Raven Track 131: The Valley of Unrest Track 132: The Village Street Track 133: To 1829, 1 Track 134: To 1829, 2 Track 135: To F, 1845 Track 136: To Francis S Osgood Track 137: To Helen Track 138: To Isaac Lea Track 139: To M Track 140: To MLS Track 141: To Margaret Track 142: To Marie Louise Track 143: To Miss Louise Olivia Hunter Track 144: To My Mother Track 145: To Octavia Track 146: To One in Paradise Track 147: To The River Track 148: Ulalume Essays Track 149: A Few Words on Secret Writing Track 150: Eureka: A Prose Poem, Part 1 Track 151: Eureka: A Prose Poem, Part 2 Track 152: Eureka: A Prose Poem, Part 3 Track 153: Eureka: A Prose Poem, Part 4 Track 154: Eureka: A Prose Poem, Part 5 Track 155: Maelzel's Chess Player Track 156: Morning on the Wissahiccon Track 157: The Balloon Hoax Track 158: The Philosophy of Composition Track 159: The Philosophy of Furniture Track 160: The Poetic Priciple Track 161: The Rationale of Verse, Part 1 Track 162: The Rationale of Verse, Part 2 Novels Track 163: The Journal of Julius Rodman, Opening Credits Track 164: Chapter 1 Track 165: Chapter 2 Track 166: Chapter 3 Track 167: Chapter 4 Track 168: Chapter 5 Track 169: Chapter 6 Track 170: The Narrative of Arthur Gordan Pym of Nantucket, Opening Credits Track 171: Chapter 1 Track 172: Chapter 2 Track 173: Chapter 3 Track 174: Chapter 4 Track 175: Chapter 5 Track 176: Chapter 6 Track 177: Chapter 7 Track 178: Chapter 8 Track 179: Chapter 9 Track 180: Chapter 10 Track 181: Chapter 11 Track 182: Chapter 12 Track 183: Chapter 13 Track 184: Chapter 14 Track 185: Chapter 15 Track 186: Chapter 16 Track 187: Chapter 17 Track 188: Chapter 18 Track 189: Chapter 19 Track 190: Chapter 20 Track 191: Chapter 21 Track 192: Chapter 22 Track 193: Chapter 23 Track 194: Chapter 24 Track 195: Chapter 25 Track 196: Chapter 26 Track 197: Note Track 198: Closing Credits

71 people found this helpful

This is fantastic!

This narrator is wonderful. He has a rich, full voice and reads it well. I'm really enjoying listening to it. I haven't listened to the whole thing (it's 60 hours long) but everything I've listened to has been great!

15 people found this helpful

• Overall 2 out of 5 stars
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars
• Story 1 out of 5 stars

• Secretly_A_Skeksis

An Average Man's Thoughts

I could not pay attention to what was happening. Due to the youth problem of not being able to pay attention to one thing for very long I typically listen to a book while; doing chores, working out, or going to sleep. For the life of me I could only keep track of what was happening in each short story if I was using either my full or the majority of my attention. There isn't necessarily a problem with that except that I was getting bored with each story pretty fast. Maybe I just don't have the attention span for 60 hours of short stories which will eventually use the word "ejaculate" because boy did my man Poe have an obsession with it. Of course I enjoyed, The Raven, and A Tell-Tale Heart, we all do. However I thought there would be some other good eerie listens in here, and after 30 some odd hours of life I'll never get back, I found just some disappointment. Not worth it, thank GOD for the audible credits because full price is not worth it. Voice acting was excellent though!

2 people found this helpful

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Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career Essay (Biography)

Introduction, works cited.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, and playwright. He was born in January 19, 1809 and died in October 7, 1849 (Burlingame 6). Edgar was among the pioneers of creative writing in America. He was proficient in writing short stories and contributed in developing detective fiction style. His love for writing was apparent and this led him to believe that he could earn a living through writing (Burlingame 12).

This resulted to a life of financial problems. Edgar’s childhood was difficult and stressing. For instance, his father abandoned the family and his mother died shortly after. He schooled at University of Virginia but later dropped owing to financial constraints (Burlingame 14). He joined the army but failed to record exemplary performance. This prompted him to quit the military. These events affected his relationship with foster parents with whom he parted ways.

This marked the onset of his publishing and literary exploits. He worked for several literary journals as a writer and analyst on matters literature (Burlingame 17). Edgar died in Baltimore and the cause of his death was not clear. It resulted from alcohol, suicide, coronary failure, brain exhaustion, among other reasons. Edgar Allan Poe was and is still a literary icon of international repute. His work continues to influence literature in United States of America and the world at large.

Edgar began his literary career at a very difficult time in the United States. The publishing environment was harsh and unfavourable (Wiles 22). Cases of piracy were rampant and publishers failed to compensate writers for work done. This made life difficult for Edgar as he depended on writing as a sole source of livelihood.

On several occasions, he had to solicit for monetary and other forms of assistance from friends. After trying poetry, Allan turned to other forms of literary styles, especially prose writing (Wiles 22). He wrote several stories for a journal in Philadelphia after which he commenced work on his drama, Politan. In 1833, Edgar won a literary prize for his accomplishments in writing short stories.

Through this award, Edgar captured John P Kennedy’s attention, who later introduced him to Thomas White. Thomas White was the editor of southern literary messenger (Wiles 23). Edgar rose to position of assistant editor. His work contributed to success of the periodical. He worked on poetry, critiques, book reviews, and an array of short stories (Wiles 26).

During his lifetime, Edgar cultivated an image of a seasoned literary critic, mostly depicted in his long career as a writer and critic (Meltzer 32). His fellow writers and critics held him in high esteem and respect for his literary prowess. He was an acclaimed writer in fiction literature.

Poe was instrumental in establishing and developing the genre of detective fiction. His work in this genre has influenced style and approach of contemporary fiction writers. His influence is apparent in the field of science fiction, with several writers writing sequels to his works (Meltzer 40). Edgar has had immense influence on modern writers. His works remain pivotal in shaping contemporary literary endeavours.

Edgar Allan Poe’s literary work traversed the field of science, particularly physics and cosmology. This was particularly contained in Eureka: A Prose Poem, which he wrote in 1848, a year before his death (Meltzer 43). The poem contained a theory that effectively embodied the big bang theory in intricate and candid detail.

In writing Eureka, Edgar shunned scientifically accepted procedures and wrote from personal feelings and emotions, and thus categorised it under art rather than science. Edgar was also experienced in code writing. He exploited the fact that people were not aware of this form of writing in fine detail. He took advantage of that by popularizing himself as a seasoned expert in cryptography (Meltzer 45).

He managed to awaken public interest in the subject and propagated a culture of continuity in the subject matter. William Friedman, a cryptologist in the 20 th century, drew inspiration from Edgar’s exploits in this area of practice. William was inspired to follow this career after reading Edgar’s work in his early life. During his days in the US Army, William applied his experience in cryptography to understand and crack the coded language used by Japan during the Second World War (Meltzer 52).

This example is a perfect demonstration of how Edgar Allan Poe influenced society through his interest in literature and science. Edgar Allan Poe excelled in gothic literature. In his writing, he recurrently focused on the subject of death in intricate details. He examined various aspects of death and its effects on human beings. He questioned what happens to human body after death. People did not appreciate his foray into death because of its tag as a taboo subject.

His in-depth analysis of death portrayed him as being rude and offensive. For a long time, people did not embrace his literary themes. However, his writings influenced people as they appreciated his style and school of thought. In the end, his literary work earned respect and admiration from fans and peers.

Edgar Allan Poe’s life was full of challenges and events that turned into a tale of sorts. However, Allan was a tenacious soul always willing to fight to see another day. The realities surrounding his personal life were difficult and taxing in many aspects. In his fighting spirit, Edgar did not give up on life (Hayes 22). Later in life, he encountered numerous problems, most of which he surmounted with considerable ease.

Through his life, people learn countless lessons with regard to the nature of human life. Through his life, it is apparent that life presents us with numerous challenges and complexities. However, we should not allow the challenges to dampen our spirit to soldier on with life. Just like Edgar, we should endeavour to face difficulties in a rational and intelligent manner. Edgar was not perfect in life but he struggled to fulfil his destiny in the best way possible (Hayes 29).

Edgar Allan Poe’s influence is apparent in modern society. Through his works of literature, many writers have been inspired to explore literary circles. His literary style and approach has remained a point of reference for many students of literature.

Literary enthusiasts derive morale from Edgar, considering that he lived in an era when technological advancements were minimal. Undoubtedly, it was difficult to advance literary agenda in whatever form. Edgar, in his element, overcame challenges and established a literary legacy that has stood the test of time.

Indeed, Edgar has influence on modern society. In literary circles, people have a lot to gain from his unique style and approach to pertinent issues in society. Beyond literature, people learn to appreciate the value of hard work and dedication to work. Allan was a hard worker who always believed in the sanctity of individual industry. Indeed, Edgar Allan Poe continues to inspire society through his works of literature.

Burlingame, Jeff. Edgar Allan Poe: Deep Into That Darkness Peering . London:

Enslow Publishers, 2008. Print.

Hayes, Kevin. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe . London: Cambridge

University Press, 2002. Print.

Meltzer, Milton. Edgar Allan Poe: A Biography . New York: Twenty-First Century

Books, 2003. Print.

Wiles, Julian. Nevermore! : Edgar Allan Poe: The Final Mystery. New York: Dramatic

Publishing, 1995. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2022, June 3). Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-allan-poe-essay/

"Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career." IvyPanda , 3 June 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-allan-poe-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career'. 3 June.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career." June 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-allan-poe-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career." June 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-allan-poe-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Literary Career." June 3, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/edgar-allan-poe-essay/.

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The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe

Nevermore in baltimore.

Occurring in a time of primitive medicine and inconsistent record-keeping, Poe’s death has become one of the enduring mysteries of American literature. David F. Gaylin’s book marks the first attempt to offer a comprehensive and balanced study of this historical event. After chronicling the circumstances that may have contributed to the poet’s death, the book examines key details about the story. It traces Poe’s movements and personal encounters before also exploring how Poe was handled and treated by others who attempted to come to his aid. Proceeding with the liveliness of a detective story, the discussion sheds new light on these events, and it offers new information about the burial of Poe’s body and the subsequent relocations of his tomb. With the addition of supplementary reference materials including a register of formally proposed causes of death, a timeline of relevant events, and a map of Poe’s final movements in Baltimore, this book is an essential resource for both scholars and general readers seeking answers to the mystery of Poe’s death.

David F. Gaylin has set out to solve the greatest literary mystery of the nineteenth century—the cause of Edgar Allan Poe's death. In the process, Gaylin has sorted through dozens of strange and contradictory accounts of Poe's final days, and he has scrutinized an eccentric cast of eyewitnesses. This investigation offers a readable, well-paced detective story that will appeal to both Poe scholars and the general public. — Chris Semtner, Curator, Poe Museum, Richmond, VA

This book makes an important contribution to studies of Poe by weaving the varied accounts, opinions, and scholarly theories about Poe's death into a coherent narrative. While Gaylin proposes an answer to the mystery, the book's greatest value lies in its presentation of material allowing for the specialist and the amateur to make their own informed decisions. — Harry Lee Poe, Charles Colson University Professor of Faith & Culture, Union University

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