This Top Five Classics illustrated edition of the Essential Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe features 75 of Poe’s greatest short stories and poems. 33 Tales, including: • The Tell-Tale Heart • The Murders in the Rue Morgue • The Fall of the House of Usher • The Masque of the Red Death • The Pit and the Pendulum • The Purloined Letter • The Black Cat • Hop-Frog • The Cask of Amontillado 42 Poems, including: • The Raven • The Conqueror Worm • The Bells • Tamerlane • Al Aaraaf • Lenore • Eldorado • Annabel Lee Also featuring: • More than 85 large illustrations from Gustave Doré, Harry Clarke, and Edmund Dulac • Annotated translations of passages in French, Latin, Greek or other foreign languages, along with Poe’s own notes • Alphabetical, linked title index and detailed author biography Whether you are new to Edgar Allan Poe or a student of his work, this illustrated/annotated edition is a must-have for your ebook library. (For a comprehensive collection of 157 Poe works, see Top Five Classics’ Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems.)

Tamerlane and Other Poems is the first published work by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The short collection of poems was first published in 1827. Today, it is believed only 12 of approximately 50 copies of the collection still exist. The poems were largely inspired by Lord Byron, including the long title poem "Tamerlane", which depicts a historical conqueror who laments the loss of his first romance. Like much of Poe's future work, the poems in Tamerlane and Other Poems include themes of love, death, and pride.

Renowned as the creator of the detective story and a master of horror, the author of "The Red Mask of Death," "The Black Cat," and "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe seems to have derived his success from suffering and to have suffered from his success. "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" have been read as signs of his personal obsessions, and "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Descent into the Maelstrom" as symptoms of his own mental collapse. Biographers have seldom resisted the opportunities to confuse the pathologies in the stories with the events in Poe's life. Against this tide of fancy, guesses, and amateur psychologizing, Arthur Hobson Quinn's biography devotes itself meticulously to facts. Based on exhaustive research in the Poe family archive, Quinn extracts the life from the legend, and describes how they both were distorted by prior biographies. "

This Top Five Classics illustrated edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven includes: • All 25 illustrations by Gustave Doré for Harper & Brothers’ 1884 edition • An informative Introduction • A detailed Biography of Edgar Allan Poe • The illustrated version and text-only version of the full poem No poem has ever received the kind of immediate and overwhelming response that Poe’s “The Raven” did when it first appeared in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. It made Poe an overnight sensation (though his great fame never brought him much wealth) and the poem, a powerfully haunting elegy to lost love, remains one of the most beloved and recognizable verses in the English language. The illustrations that accompany this Top Five Classics edition are reproductions of the renowned French artist Gustave Doré’s steel-plate engravings created for Harper & Brothers’ 1884 release of The Raven. It would be Doré’s last commission as he died shortly after completing the 25 illustrations in January 1883. His illustrations would become famous in their own right, evoking as they do the lyrical and mystical air of Poe’s masterpiece.

About Author The works of American author Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) include many poems, short stories, and one novel. His fiction spans multiple genres, including horror fiction, adventure, science fiction, and detective fiction, a genre he is credited with inventing. These works are generally considered part of the Dark romanticism movement, a literary reaction to Transcendentalism. Poe's writing reflects his literary theories: he disagreed with didacticism[3] and allegory. Meaning in literature, he said in his criticism, should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface; works whose meanings are too obvious cease to be art. Poe pursued originality in his works, and disliked proverbs.He often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy.His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Though known as a masterly practitioner of Gothic fiction, Poe did not invent the genre; he was following a long-standing popular tradition.Poe's literary career began in 1827 with the release of 50 copies of Tamerlane and Other Poems credited only to "a Bostonian", a collection of early poems that received virtually no attention. In December 1829, Poe released Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems in Baltimore before delving into short stories for the first time with "Metzengerstein" in 1832.His most successful and most widely read prose during his lifetime was "The Gold-Bug", which earned him a $100 prize, the most money he received for a single work. One of his most important works, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", was published in 1841 and is today considered the first modern detective story.Poe called it a "tale of ratiocination".Poe became a household name with the publication of "The Raven" in 1845, though it was not a financial success. The publishing industry at the time was a difficult career choice and much of Poe's work was written using themes specifically catered for mass market tastes.

Examines the life and career of Edgar Allan Poe including synopses of many of his works, biographies of family and friends, a discussion of Poe's influence on other writers, and places that influenced his writing.

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