The Ultimate Edition for Poe | Edgar Allan Poe : Poetry and Tales (Library of America)

STOP YOUR SEARCH- You've found the definitive Poe collection | Edgar Allan Poe : Poetry and Tales (Library of America) | Edgar Allan Poe

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	• Edgar Allan Poe : Poetry and Tales (Library of America) Edgar Allan Poe Library of America, 1984 - 1408 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fine job

Book was in even better shape than advertised; service was prompt and hassle-free.

The Ultimate Edition for Poe

The books of the Library of America are among the very best and most beautiful editions I know of. The paper is acid-free material, it won't yellow and get all brittley any time soon, and you can lay that book open on a table and it won't close itself. It is a great object and I won't even discuss Poe's work here, though tons could be said, of course.

This is a hardcover book with a neat dusjacket; it also has one of these thin ribbons to mark your page. It's pure awesomeness I tell you! Anyone who enjoys Poe would do well to get this edition, it's the best out there and it contains all of Poe's fiction, including some never-published-before material.

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STOP YOUR SEARCH- You've found the definitive Poe collection

There's no point whatsoever in reviewing the work of Poe. As you know, or soon will know, it is the work of genius & above reproach, particularly from a mere mortal Amazon reviewer like myself.

So instead I am reviewing this collection of his works specifically. Safe to say there a hundreds of books out there containing his work, many of which are misleadingly titled 'the complete...' or 'the definitive...'. Nonsense. None of these books have been anywhere near complete. On top of that, few, if any, are attractively presented or pieced together with some logical thought process evident.

This thick, hefty (but not large-sized) 1984 Library of America edition tips the scales at over 1500 pages(!) and has all of his mesmerising short stories, all of his fascinating poems, and his other sought after works which other reviewers here detail more closely. Better yet, for once they are in chronological order, which gives the reader the opportunity to follow Poe's own development.

Yes, it is expensive, but this is an absolute essential for your library, and assuming you bring up your children to love reading, will be in your family for many generations. This is not an expensive book, this is an investment for you and your family that will give you decades of pleasure (150 years after his death and we're still reading Poe!)

THIS my friends, is the absolute and comprehensive collection of the works of Poe, contained within a beautiful and fittingly gothic-styled hardback. Don't sell yourself short and look for a cheaper & inferior book, snap up one of the remaining copys of this book, it will outlive you...

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Quoth the raven

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.

The Library of America edition is a lovely collection of Poe's work -- the paper is thin and of high quality, the binding is very strong, and great care has been made for this copy. It's expensive, but it's ideal for the serious, frequent Poe reader.

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

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For the SERIOUS Poe lover.

If you want the real Poe, the Library of America version of Poe's Poetry and Tales is the best bargain going. This volume should give either a lover of Poe or a serious scholar a handy volume of the Poe canon. I am not going to extol the virtues of Edgar Allan Poe. He was one of our most important national authors and an innovator of forms and genres. Master of the macabre, inventor of the detective story, explicator of the psychotic soul-Poe was the father of psychological horror literature as well as an accomplished satirist, critic and poet. If you want all of the poems and tales all in one place, go buy this book. Apparently the two volume Borzoi Poe (Knopf) edited by Arthur Hobson Quinn and Edward H. O'Neill is out of print. That was certainly a respectable edition of the poems and stories, and it included, the marvelous metaphysical Eureka as well as all the tales and poems and a respectable cross-section of the criticism in a handsome two-volume edition. The Modern Library and Doubleday complete Poe's are good enough to read for pleasure. But if you want a version of Poe that can be used as a reading text as well as a scholarly resource (meaning serious stuff) then this Library of America volume is just the thing for you. It is edited by Patrick Quinn, a highly respected Poe scholar, and its texts are good-and you get all of them. It's certainly a bargain when compared to the Thomas Ollive Mabbott/Burton Pollin variorum edition, a multi-volume extravaganza. And most of us don't need all that detail anyway. This is a nice volume because it encapsulates the canon of the fiction and poetry-clean and compact. Here you get all the poems and tales (short stories) as well as The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, the timely Poe version of Lewis and Clark called The Journal of Julius Rodman, the cosmological extravaganza/ metaphysical tour de force that Poe called Eureka. This is all of Poe that you might want to read. And the texts are all derived from the real authoritative readers' texts defined by the best Poe scholars. There is a second volume in the series that contains criticism that brings it all back home.

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Poe's complete poetry and fiction, collected for the first time, including his remarkable and haunting poems, his classic tales of mystery, horror, and suspense, and his humorous sketches. Includes famous stories such as "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," along with his most popular poems such as "Annabel Lee," "The Raven," and lesser-known works, and his unusual prose-poem "Eureka." This volume displays Poe's extraordinary range and technique, as well as his gift for revealing the darker possibilities of human experience.

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