The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2

This second volume of the 'Raven Edition' of Poe's works gathers twenty-two of his tales. Some are among the most famous horror stories ever written: 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Tell-Tale Heart', 'The Black Cat', 'The Cask of Amontillado', 'The Masque of the Red Death' and 'The Premature Burial'. Others are tales of reasoning and wonder, such as 'The Purloined Letter', in which the detective Auguste Dupin finds a stolen letter hidden in plain sight, and 'A Descent into the Maelström', in which a fisherman survives a giant whirlpool by observing how things float.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) believed that a short story should produce a single, intense effect, and his tales shaped both horror and detective fiction; Baudelaire's translations made him a classic in France. Several of these tales are also in the library as separate books, such as The Fall of the House of Usher, and his most famous poem is The Raven.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was born in Boston to travelling actors and orphaned before he was three. Raised by a Richmond merchant who later disowned him, he lived by his pen as a poet, critic and magazine editor, always short of money. His young wife Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847, and two years later Poe was found delirious in Baltimore and died days later, in circumstances that are still a mystery.

He made the short story an art of total effect, wrote tales of terror such as The Fall of the House of Usher, invented the detective story with 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' and wrote 'The Raven', one of the most famous poems in English. French poets led by Baudelaire honoured him before America did.