Customer Reviews

Entire Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe: Photographic & Annotated Edition

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Of course, as a student in middle school and high school, I read Poe in English class; The Purloined Letter, The Tell-Tale Heart, and my creepy-sinking-feeling-in-the-stomach favorite The Pit and the Pendulum. I was such a Poe fan that I memorized several poems including "Annabelle Lee" and "The Raven." Poe was a huge favorite also because he resided during the most influential period of his life in our own Philadelphia. Despite his ignominious death almost literally in a Baltimore gutter, he was kind of a local literary hero.

This book has not only the complete works, it has background interesting to the scholar or student; there is much background on the women to whom he wrote poetry. Stories are annotated, there are photos, and a very worthy foreward by Andrew Barger. While not a dry, heavily researched treatise, this book is a valuable reference and study on the entire works of Poe and if you were going to get a collected works of Poe, I'd recommend this above all others.

My only criticisms; I would have liked to have had a really in-depth biographical section and...the print is very small. While the volume is quite handy in size, the print for my (middle-aged) eyes is just hard to read, even with ye olde bifocals to read for pleasure. And I intend to re-read this book with much pleasure. It's plain after all these years that Poe is one of our greats, and deserves to be read and read often.

I don't think I need to actually review the works of Poe himself, as there is no doubt he was a literary genius.

I would have given this book 5 stars had it not been for 2 factors:

1) There are a few typos. Well, more than a few. In just flipping through the book, I came across several. Most notably in the introduction to "The Cask of Amontillado." Nothing too major, but annoying nonetheless.

2) The paper on which the book was printed is rather cheap. When I got it brand new in the mail, viewing the pages from the side, they almost looked warped as if they got damp. Again, not a major problem, but disappointing considering I paid over $30 for this book.

On the upside, this is an incredible collection of stories and poems of one of my personal favorite writers. The notes and back-stories to his works are interesting and insightful to say the least. They add so much more to the story.

Despite the 2 minor flaws of the book as mentioned above, it was well worth buying.

*Edit* Addressing some of the problems other reviewers had:

1) The print is rather small, but since I have 20/20 vision, it's not a problem for me, but it should be considered for people who aren't as lucky.

2) I agree with the other reviews... Calling it "photographic" is misleading. There are no high-gloss full-page photographs, just small (think thumbnail size on a computer) pictures that are of VERY low quality. The largest photo is of the editor on the dust cover. I wish I was joking.

The works themselves get a 5/5. The editing gets a 2/5, which as I mentioned above is a shame when you consider the cost of this tome.

A tad misleading, there are only a handful (perhaps 4) of very small photos in this entire gargantuan textbook. Not exactly what it seems or how it's titled. Keep in mind this is a hefty volume too, no reading before bed with this one!

I've always had a liking for Edgar Allan Poe, with his tales of horror, mystery and suspense, done in the atmospheric prose of a master writer. Since I live close enough, I've even made some trips to his gravesite, a place that is always surrounded by a sense of sadness.

Poe was a tormented genius who died young, under mysterious circumstances, and at the time of his death he wasn't deservingly popular. Certainly his work was not cute romances for the masses -- he explored the darkness of the human heart, love, satire, and the earliest whodunnit stories. And "Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" brings together all of his poetry and writings in one book.

Poe's fiction writings include short stories and novellas, which tend to be rather weird -- a treasure-hunt and a golden insect, a ship caught in a whirlpool, a hypnotized man talks about the universe, and stories of despair, madness, and occasionally beauty. There is also his trilogy of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin stories, which were the first to feature a brilliant detective solving an impossible crime.

Most people know about "The Raven" (which even has the Baltimore Ravens named after it) but Poe actually wrote a lot of poetry, most of which readers never heard of. Sometimes dark, or whimsical, or even both. "By a route obscure and lonely/Haunted by ill angels only/Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT/On a black throne reigns upright..."

And, of course, the horror. This is what Poe is best known for, including such well-known stories as "The Fall Of The House Of Usher." But there are also lesser-known gems -- tales of a plague invading a party, being buried alive, a portrait that siphoned the life out of its subject, and a nightly visit to an Italian crypt leading to madness.

Don't read "Complete Stories and Poems" all at once. It's too intense. It's better to soak it in a little at a time, so that you can get a better feel for the different kinds of writing that Poe did, and how he excelled at pretty much everything he put down on paper. Most great writers can't boast of that much.

Poe's writing is what makes even his least story or poem come alive -- he brought a gothic, misty vibrancy to his stories, and could make his quiet dialogue seem utterly chilling (" "I have no name in the regions which I inhabit. I was mortal, but am fiend..."). It's not hard to see why he was an influence on authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and Franz Kafka.

"Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" is a must-have for anyone with an appreciation for great literature and beautiful, dark writing.

Andrew Barger opens his hefty book that includes all of the prose and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe with an introduction 'Demystifying Poe', an essay so well written and informative that it sets the tenor for the important collections of his book 'ENTIRE TALES & POEMS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE:Photographic & Annotated Edition': 'Edgar Allan Poe is arguably our most important original and brilliant author of American letters and most misunderstood. His combination of industriousness, minuteness for detail, originality, and respect for his craft are unparalleled.' Barger then proceeds to offer all of the written works of Poe (many of these will be discoveries to the casual Poe reader), offering annotations to clarify the time and setting and influences on each work. This is an ambitious work and one that immediately becomes the scholar's gold standard for research on this major writer of mystery and thrills.

If for no other reason than to have a solid selection of the works of Poe on the shelf, this beautifully designed and handsomely printed book will serve that intent. But once the reader thumbs through this book, pausing to re-read favorites such as 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Pit and the Pendulum', and 'The Raven', there are many little known gems of short stories, articles, essays, and poems in addition to the stories that are less familiar to the larger audience to discover.

Barger adds 'guidance' to his method of presenting these works by such devices as listing all of the poems under the subheadings of 'Women in Edgar Allan Poe's Life', 'Miscellaneous Poetry both Before and After Age 25', 'Autobiographical', and 'Men in Edgar Allen Poe's Life.' These may seem like minor adjustments to the collections, but in Barger's hands the divisions add meaning and context to the works.

In addition to all of the written works of Poe, this handsome book contains photographs and many of the famous illustrations for his works - especially those of Harry Clarke and Gustave Dore. The fine art of these two men is also honored with annotations adding to their importance to Poe's popularity as a writer. This is simply a splendid book, handsomely written and produced, and a fine tribute to the literature of Poe - and to the scholarship of Andrew Barger! Highly Recommended. Grady Harp

Yes, you read that correctly: Poe was a funny guy. Biting, fearless and full of moral outrage despite his scandalous personal life, this writer socked it to his contemporaries as few authors in American letters have ever dared.

I cried with side-splitting laughter, and I mean it--tears rolled down my cheeks--as Poe indulged in some of his unfettered skewerings. "Some Words with a Mummy" took me off-guard because the mummy topic's so hackneyed in gothic fiction, and what do I care about mummy stories, but this hysterical poke at post-industrial hubris is delivered with all the comedic sophistication and might of Dostoevsky and Melville. Speaking of Dostoevsky, I found possible influences throughout Poe's writing, which I'd previously not read in such totality. For example, "The Pit and the Pendulum" begins with "I was sick" versus "I'm a sick man" in "Notes from Underground," and many evocations of darkness, wit, parody and the soul echo Dostoevsky's work.

Poe's rivals deserved ridicule, too. While reading Editor Andrew Barger's notes, I became struck by the savagery of Hiram Fuller and Thomas English, who inspired the entirely appropriate and beautifully aimed response, "The Cask of Amontillado." Poe strayed off the ranch of good manners himself, at times, but he redeemed himself I gather through steadfast a devotion to his Muse. The literary comparison's clear: Thomas English who? I also recommend checking out Poe's clever and still-relevant poem, "Epigram for Wall Street."

A few words about this edition. It's a huge volume, dimensionally, and as noted here in the Amazon reviews, the print's tiny. At the same time, if you can read font that resembles the lower-half lines of an eye chart--and fortunately, I can--this layout rewards you because the short stories, thusly reduced in number of pages, seem shorter. Barger's footnotes and commentaries are excellent, and the breadth of offerings, from letters to poems to published works, is exceptional.

I only wish Poe'd written more. As Barger shrewdly observes, Poe's delight with the role of critic did crowd out time that was perhaps better spent writing, and this imperiled the famous author's stature in the continuum of world literature--apparently a subject of interest to Poe. Yet ranking great literature's probably silly, so I won't go there.

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Shadow Fields
Snooker Glen
Dasha

this book is all you need to buy if you want to get started to poes work.not only is it a complete collection but theres a dictionary explaining the historical scientific and archaic vocabulary from the 1800s.also includes pictures and paragraphs explaining the inspirations for the storys or who they related to in his life.its the only way for a layman to read poe and even attempt to understand it.Also good by the same author is coffee with poe a book compiling letters to and from poe to various people in his life and kind of piecing it together and putting it into to order

This was a good book, but the way it was previewed was like it was going to have 20 or so pictures of him that you never seen. This turned out to be untrue. The poems fantastic, some of the best I ever read. But I just wish I wasn't mislead with the lack of photos.

Excellent value for the price. Interesting supplemental data. Only problem is that the type is very small.