Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe [Hardcover]

Edgar Allan Poe (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 265 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Inc.; Reprint Edition edition (1966)
• ISBN-10: 3257050518
• ISBN-13: 978-3257050516
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,215,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review for book, not contents of book., September 15, 2004

By 

V. Patel (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Hardcover)

I think Poe's genius hardly needs discussion on this forum.
So, I offer a small review on the physical book itself.

As another reviewer mentioned, there are no annotations.
You will have to translate (or find on the Net) the Latin,
the French, etc., yourself, though you can skip them and
still understand the story. I'm no Poe scholar, so I don't
know which works, if any, were excluded from the book, but
all of my favorites are here ("The Tell Tale Heart," "The
Fall of the House of Usher," "The Raven," etc.) and several
more that I've never heard of until now.

This is a solid volume, containing some of the best short
stories ever written in English and I've enjoyed reading
them immensely.

5 out of 5.

98 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep into the psyche, February 1, 2001

By 

Guillermo Maynez (Mexico, Distrito Federal Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Hardcover)

The horror of being; the darkest depths of man's soul; the deepest fears brought about by darkness: it's all here. This is the work of the original genius of terror. And the most terrifying thing about Poe's stories and poems is that the threat doesn't come from a monster, or a devil, or a murderer: it comes from inside yourself, from your mind and your heart. There's no escaping them. Poe is not, of course a "terror" writer. He's just a writer, and one of the best there has been. His work can not be confined to a "genre". His tales touch horror, but there are some analytical, metaphysical, futurists, and tales of love (strange love, but love).

As correctly pointed out by other reviewers, Poe practically invented the mystery tale in which the detective is an amateur who solves the problem through reason and deduction alone ("The crimes of the Rue Morgue"). A wonderful cryptic and deductive tale is "The golden bug". "The cask of Amontillado" is a masterpiece of cruel vengeance. "The pit and the pendulum" is pure terror, like "The black cat".

The poems have even more variety. You know what the famous ones are: The Raven, The bells, Annabel Lee. Here, the most remarkable characteristics are music and rhythm. "Quoth the raven: nevermore!", and the ringing of the bells, the bells, bells, bells, etc. My personal favorite is Annabel Lee, but there are many other, less known, which are just excellent.

Poe was a troubled man, addicted to drugs and alcohol, who died in a miserable way (some thugs made him drink to use him in an electoral fraud; he died from drunkness on the streets of Baltimore). But his intellect and sensibility (hypersensibility) made him a true genius, a profound connoiseur of the human soul, up and down. His writing is superb and he will remain as a master of literature for centuries to come. In case you have never approached his work, do so now. Choose your favorite couch; wait until everybody is asleep, get yourself a good drink, and travel to the bottom of your own soul.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IIlimitable Dominion of American Literature, June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Hardcover)

Having never written a full novel, Poe is sometimes forgotten when the great fiction writers of American history are listed. The power of Poe's dark vision, though, is virtually unprecedented in world literature. The manifestation of such deep, intuitive symbols and archetypes, ones of such clarity, prophesy and terror that even his incredible craftsmanship in language becomes transparant, is a gift given to only the most blessed and tormented of writers. To read a story like the Masque of the Red Death is to be flung into an allegorical morality play which fits perfectly into the modern context. Poe's stories and poems travel through time and rap ceaselessy on the window of your conscious thoughts. An ominous pall of expectation and retribution permeates all of his work. To pick up Poe is really never to put it down.