Edgar Allan Poe

»The Pit and the Pendulum»: A prisoner wakes up to find himself in a dark cell with a deep pit. «The Gold Bug»: A golden insect leads to an incredible discovery. «The facts in the case of Mr. Valdemar»: A patient is hypnotised minutes before he dies. Is he really dead? «The Fall of the House of Usher»: A man visits an old friend and finds himself in a house full of horrors! «Down in the Maelstrom»: A sailor describes a terrifying trip though the maelstrom. «The Masque of the Red Death»: No one can escape the red death-not even a prince! «The Oblong Box»: A traveller boards a ship to New York. What does he carry in the oblong box? Retold by Stephen Colbourn.

The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe: A Kaplan SAT Score-Raising Classic features: a collection of Poe's most popular short stories; more than 700 vocabulary words frequently tested on the SAT highlighted throughout the text; definitions for each highlighted word on the facing page; a word-pronunciation guide; and an index for easy reference.

'The Black Cat' seeks revenge on its cruel master; a young wife has the life drained out of her by her insensitive artist husband in 'The Oval Portrait'; and the beating heart of a dead man exposes the killer to the police in The 'Tell-Tale Heart'.

Edgar Poe was born the son of itinerant actors on January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusets. Abandoned by his father and the later death of his mother, he was taken into the foster care of John Allan, a Virginia tobacco farmer. Now styled as Edgar Allan Poe, he distinguished himself at the University of Virginia but was equally adept at collecting debts from his assiduous gambling. His stepfather's disapproval shattered their fragile relationship and Poe left home to seek his fortune. In 1836 he married his cousin Virginia but despite his prolific activities — journalism, poetry, lecturing, short stories, publishing, criticism and experimentation with fictional genres, including the detective novel which he virtually invented with the publication of 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841) — he received scant recognition for his efforts until the publication of 'The Raven' in 1845. The poem's instant popularity gave him a new visibility in literary circles, but his personal situation remained desperate: poverty, illness, drink, and the physical decline and ultimate death of Virginia in 1847 led to his untimely and premature decline. In 1849 he was found sick, injured and semi-conscious in a Baltimore tavern. Taken to hospital, he lingered on for four days, but never recovered and on October 7th Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of 40. He was one of the most original writers in the history of American letters — a genius who, thanks to his dire reputation, was tragically misunderstood during his lifetime. It was not until Baudelaire enthusiastically translated his work that he found a wider audience in Europe, and became not only an enormous influence on modern French literature but also on the acclaimed work of writers such as Dostoevsky, Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.

Edgar Allan Poe remains the unsurpassed master of works of mystery and madness in this outstanding collection of Poe's prose and poetry are sixteen of his finest tales, including «The Tell-Tale Heart», «The Murders in the Rue Morgue», «The Fall of the House of Usher», «The Pit and the Pendulum», «William Wilson», «The Black Cat», «The Cask of Amontillado» and «Eleonora». Here too is a major selection of what Poe characterized as the passion of his life, his poems — «The Raven», «Annabel Lee», «Ulalume», «Lenore», «The Bells» and more, plus his glorious prose poem «Silence — A Fable» and only full-length novel, «The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym».

Poe's poems have been memorized and recited by millions. Among his best-loved works are «The Raven» with its hypnotic chant of «nevermore», and the sensuous and lyrical «Annabel Lee». This collection includes all of Poe's most popular rhymes.

Two cases of detection for Monsieur Auguste C. Dupin, Poe’s great detective. Who could have committed the atrocious murders in the Rue Morgue and so how did the murderer get in, or out? Will Dupin find the purloined letter and save the royal personage? Where is the minister hiding it?