The Raven Edgar Allan Poe - In Gustave Doré, one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators of the late 19h century, Edgar Allan Poe's renowned poem The Raven found perhaps its most perfect artistic interpreter. Doré's dreamlike, otherworldly style, tinged with melancholy, seems ideally matched to the bleak despair of Poe's celebrated work, among the most popular American poems ever written.This volume reprints all 26 of Doré's detailed,...

First published in a 1841 edition of Graham's Magazine, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is often cited as the first modern detective story. The first of three stories to center around C. Auguste Dupin, Poe's fictional detective, The Murders in the Rue Morgue involves Dupin's investigation of two women's murders. Establishing many of the tropes that would later become common to detective fiction, the story begins with an explanation of Dupin's theory...

First published in a 1843 edition of The Pioneer, The Tell-Tale Heart is one of Poe's best-known stories. In it, an unreliable narrator is increasingly troubled by the clouded eye of the old man he lives with. Similar to The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart focuses on the effects of mental instability, crime, and guilt.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which gives direction to the character of Man.' Including Poe's most terrifying, grotesque and haunting short stories, Tales of Mystery and Imagination is the ultimate collection of the...

The grand-prize winner of a writing contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, "The Gold-Bug" was one of Poe's most popular stories during his lifetime. Similar to his ratiocination tales-early versions of what we now call detective fiction-"The Gold-Bug" is full of mystery and adventure and includes a cryptogram, invisible ink, a scarab-like bug, and pirate treasure.

First published in a 1849 edition of The Flag of Our Union, Hop-Frog is a revenge tale akin to The Cask of Amontillado. Told from the perspective of a crippled jester who was taken from his homeland and has been abused by the king he serves, the story focuses on the revenge Hop-Frog takes after the king strikes his fellow countrywoman and performer, the dancer Trippetta.

The only full-length novel by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" was first published in 1838. It is the story of a boy from Nantucket, Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship, the "Grampus", with the help of his friend Augustus, the ship captain's son. Pym and Augustus experience many unexpected adventures and misfortunes at sea, including mutiny, violent storms, cannibalism, and the destruction of the ship. Eventually,...

The story follows a man of noble descent who calls himself William Wilson because, although denouncing his past, he does not accept responsibilities blame for his actions, saying that "man was never thus [...] tempted before". After several paragraphs, the narration then segues into a description of Wilson's boyhood, which was spent in a school "in a misty-looking village of England." William meets another boy in his school who shared the same name,...

Our narrator plots to murder an old man, though the narrator states that he loves the old man, and hates only his evil pale blue eye. The narrator insists that his careful precision in committing the murder shows that he cannot possibly be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room, in order to shine a sliver of light onto the evil eye. However, the old man's vulture eye is always closed, making it impossible to do...

Der Ich-Erzähler versucht zu beweisen, dass er nicht wahnsinnig sei. Offenbar steht er unter dem Verdacht eben dies zu sein; ob er  bereits in einer Irrenanstalt verbracht worden ist, bleibt offen; vielleicht sitzt er auch noch in  Untersuchungshaft. Er hat einen alten Mann getötet, aber nicht aus Hass oder aus Besitzgier, wie er behauptet sondern Auslöser des Verbrechens sei ausschließlich eine physische Besonderheit des Alten gewesen...