A brilliant collection of works by Edgar Allen Poe including poetry, satirical writing and his famous short stories, tales of mystery and the macabre.
Poe was a master of the modern horror tale inspired by the new technology of the time. In his literary criticism he commented that "literary creation is noted for two central points: first, a work must create a unity of effect on the reader to be considered successful; second, the production of this single effect should not be left to the hazards of accident or inspiration, but should to the minutest detail of style and subject be the result of rational deliberation on the part of the author. In poetry, this single effect must arouse the reader’s sense of beauty, an ideal that Poe closely associated with sadness, strangeness, and loss; in prose, the effect should be one revelatory of some truth, as in “tales of ratiocination” or works evoking “terror, or passion, or horror.”
We agree.