Selected Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction, and as the inventor of the modern mystery, Poe created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new selection of twenty-four tales places the most popular--"The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Purloined Letter"--alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays, and political satires.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Sickening brilliance.

By darragh o'donoghue - January 26, 2000

I used to loathe Poe's style, whose involutions seemed to drain his work of all their professed horror, while admiring the way he smuggled hugely complex ideas into popular modes - no wonder Hitchcock adored him. Now, as I grow older, I begin to value Poe more, recognise his obsessions and fears in myself, while marvelling at a style that manages to convey hothouse exoticism with remarkable, chilling precision.Of the three stories I read recently in this volume, Morella is the least successful, a rehash of Leonora (a dead wife is reincarnated in her daughter), but there a brilliance in Poe's dramatising of an idea that is admirable.The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar is truly disgusting and horrifying. A hynotist experiments on a dying man to see if he can prolong life after death. The cool analytic style lead contemporaries to confuse it with a medical testcase (it was published in a scientific journal), but what is most memorable is the anguish of the dead man... read more