Selected Tales (edition 1994)

Oh, look, I can review this book from my computer. The ins and outs of this problem deeply, deeply confuse me...

Anyway, to actually review the book: the Penguin edition of selected tales of Edgar Allan Poe is an interesting one. His writing is interesting, reasonably absorbing most of the time, and it was quite good to read the forerunners of modern detective fiction in the form of 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', and 'The Mystery of Marie Roget', though both of them got a little tiresome by the end because of the overload of detail. It read a lot like Sherlock Holmes... The more supernatural stories reminded me of William Hope Hodgson's work, particularly the ones about perils at sea.

Unfortunately, the themes get a little repetitive -- oh, look, someone's been buried alive again! ( )

Edgar Allen Poe spent the first three years of his life watching his mother die eight times a week. Perhaps this can account for the persistent macabre of his writing. His mother was an actress, he was an only child. His father had abandoned them - and by the time he was three years old his mother died for real. She died of consumption - a rather common ailment in Poe's life. In fact it seemed most women he became close to tended to die of it. For example - his adopted mother died of consumption and his wife died of consumption. The only other principle womanly/motherly figure in his life did not die of consumption, but of a brain tumor - only shortly after he had become close to her.
His life had a profound effect on him. Each story you read seems somehow a bit more morbid and horrifying then the last.
I cannot profess a love for Edgar Allen Poe stories, but I do admit fascination. Personally I look to books as a refuge from a life full of suffering. Thus, in my opinion - his stories of horror and fascination with going insane do not provide the most pleasant of sanctums. However if you enjoy the thrill of entering the mind of a man going mad, and find the pleasure in escaping his troubled world worth the pain of experiencing it - then I would highly recommend you try him out.
Wether you hate poe or love him everyone must admit that he was good at what he did. Master of imagery and genius of controlling your emotion - he not only commanded the short story, he wrote beautiful poetry, invented the "horror" genre, invented the detective story. And his character Auguste Dupin no doubt heavily influence Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create the most memorable character of modern literature: Sherlock Holmes - but that my friends is another topic.

Edgar Allen Poe is the master of what he did,
all should try Him, though not all will like him.
You must at least respect his genius and feel a mite of pity. ( )

And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. from "The Pit and the Pendulum"

This book includes some of Poe's most famous tales, such as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Read Death and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Some of the stories are really atmospheric, but others had me wondering whether he was ever going to finish lecturing me and start telling the story. There was one story that seemed totally out of place amongst the horror and revenant corpses, and that was "How to Write a Blackwood Article", a satirical tale about a woman being taught how to write sensational magazine articles such as those published in Blackwood's magazine. ( )

http://sarahbbc.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/selected-tales-edgar-allen-poe/ ( )

It’s Poe, so you know the deal. As usual, the horror stories are the best. And credit to Poe for inventing the detective genre with Murders in The Rue Morgue, though the other two stories with the detective Dupin “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” and “The Purloined Letter” come across like Poe trying to show you how intellectual he is. ( )