Short Fiction, Edgar Allan Poe [best autobiographies to read TXT] 📗

Short Fiction

By Edgar Allan Poe.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Edgar Allan Poe The Life of Edgar Allan Poe The Death of Edgar Allan Poe Short Fiction Metzengerstein The Duc de l’Omelette A Tale of Jerusalem Loss of Breath Bon-Bon MS. Found in a Bottle The Assignation Berenice Morella Lionizing The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall King Pest Shadow Four Beasts in One Mystification Silence Ligeia How to Write a Blackwood Article A Predicament The Devil in the Belfry The Man That Was Used Up The Fall of the House of Usher William Wilson The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling The Business Man The Man of the Crowd The Murders in the Rue Morgue A Descent Into the Maelström The Island of the Fay The Colloquy of Monos and Una Never Bet the Devil Your Head Eleonora Three Sundays in a Week The Oval Portrait The Masque of the Red Death The Landscape Garden The Mystery of Marie Rogêt The Pit and the Pendulum The Telltale Heart The Gold-Bug The Black Cat Diddling The Spectacles A Tale of the Ragged Mountains The Premature Burial Mesmeric Revelation The Oblong Box The Angel of the Odd Thou Art the Man The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. The Purloined Letter The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade Some Words with a Mummy The Power of Words The Imp of the Perverse The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar The Sphinx The Cask of Amontillado The Domain of Arnheim Mellonta Tauta Hop-Frog Von Kempelen and His Discovery X-ing a Paragrab Landor’s Cottage Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Edgar Allan Poe An Appreciation

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore⁠—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of “never⁠—never more!”

This stanza from “The Raven” was recommended by James Russell Lowell as an inscription upon the Baltimore monument which marks the resting place of Edgar Allan Poe, the most interesting and original figure in American letters. And, to signify that peculiar musical quality of Poe’s genius which inthralls every reader, Mr. Lowell suggested this additional verse, from the “Haunted Palace”:

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling ever more,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

Born in poverty at Boston, January 19, 1809, dying under painful circumstances at Baltimore, October 7, 1849, his whole literary career of scarcely fifteen years a pitiful struggle for mere subsistence, his memory malignantly misrepresented by his earliest biographer, Griswold, how completely has truth at last routed falsehood and how magnificently has Poe come into his own. For “The Raven,” first published in 1845, and, within a few months, read, recited and parodied wherever the English language was spoken, the half-starved poet received $10! Less than a year later his brother poet, N. P. Willis, issued this touching appeal to the admirers of genius on behalf of the neglected author, his dying wife and her devoted mother, then living under very straitened circumstances in a little cottage at Fordham, NY:

“Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of public charity. There is no intermediate stopping-place, no respectful shelter, where, with the delicacy due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, till, with returning health, he would resume his labors, and his unmortified sense of independence.”

And this was the tribute paid by the American public to the master who had given to it such tales of conjuring charm, of witchery and mystery as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia”; such fascinating hoaxes as “The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall,” “MS. Found in a Bottle,” “A Descent Into the Maelström” and “The Balloon Hoax”; such tales of conscience as “William Wilson,” “The Black Cat” and “The Telltale Heart,” wherein the retributions of remorse are portrayed with an awful fidelity; such tales of natural beauty as “The Island of the Fay” and “The Domain of Arnheim”; such marvellous studies in ratiocination as the “Gold-Bug,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter” and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” the latter, a recital of fact, demonstrating the author’s wonderful capability of correctly analyzing the mysteries of the human mind; such tales of illusion and banter as “The Premature Burial” and “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether”; such bits of extravaganza as “The Devil in the Belfry”