Bøker av Edgar Allan Poe

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 infamous author's macabre works.Considered to be one of the earliest American writers to encapsulate the genre of detective-fiction, the collection features some of his most popular tales.'The Gold-Bug' is the only tale that was popular in his lifetime, whereas 'The Black Cat', 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' became more widely read after his death.Focussing on the internal conflict of individuals, the power of the dead over the living, and psychological explorations of darker human emotion that appear to anticipate Sigmund Freud's later theories on the psyche, Poe's Gothic terror stories are considered masterpieces the world over.

A novel that relates the adventures of Pym after he stows away on a whaling ship, where he endures starvation, encounters with cannibals a whirlpool, and finally a journey to an iceless Antarctic sea. It draws on the conventions of travel writing and science fiction, and on Edgar Allan Poe's own experiences at sea.

This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates an intense interest in aesthetic issues and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. The Fall of the House of Usher describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In The Tell Tale Heart, a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Cask of Amontillado explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW PEARLEdgar Allan Poe invented detective fiction with these three mesmerising stories of a young eccentric named C.

Hans Phaall, a bankrupt bellows-mender from Rotterdam, thinks up an ingenious scheme to get rid of his creditors and to escape from his dreary existence. He constructs a balloon that will carry him all the way to the moon. On the night of 1st April he tricks his creditors into helping him to inflate the balloon. As soon as the contraption is ready to take off, Hans Phaall gives his creditors the slip and kills them in an explosion. The perilous balloon flight lasts nineteen days and is reported in great detail. When the bellows-mender finally lands on the moon he finds a city inhabited by ugly little people. Hans Phaall pines for a return to his planet and sends one of the moon-dwellers to Rotterdam with a letter for burgomaster Superbus Von Underduk. In that letter Hans Phaall offers information about the moon and its inhabitants in exchange for forgiveness for his crime. The messenger arrives in Rotterdam and causes great excitement and confusion among the level-headed burghers. 'Hans Phaall -- A Tale' was first published in 1835, when Edgar Allan Poe was twenty-five years old and virtually unknown. The story was later renamed 'The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfaall'. Forged with Poe's passion for astronomy and literature it shows influences of such divergent publications as Sir John Herschel's 'A Treatise on Astronomy', Washington Irving's 'Rip Van Winkle' and Rudolph Erich Raspe's 'Singular Travels, Campaigns and Adventures of Baron Münchhausen'. 'Hans Phaall' -- much admired by Jules Verne -- is an extraordinary tale in which Poe's learning and imagination form a hallucinatory mix of science and fiction. It is looked upon by many as the first true science-fiction story. This edition combines the first version of the tale with several later, revised versions. Included in it is a short essay on 'Pure Imagination' by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1849, only months before the author died.

Word count 11,960 Bestseller CD: American English

With an Introduction by John S. Whitley, University of Sussex.This collection of Poe's best stories contains all the terrifying and bewildering tales that characterise his work. As well as the Gothic horror of such famous stories as 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Fall of the House of Usher', 'The Premature Burial' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart', all of Poe's Auguste Dupin stories are included.These are the first modern detective stories and include 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Roget' and 'The Purloined Letter'.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an archetypal American story of escape from home and family which traces a young man's rite of passage through a series of terrible brushes with death during a fateful sea voyage. But the plot also goes much deeper, as Pym encounters various interpretative dilemmas, and then leaves the reader with a broken-off ending that defies solution.

Word count 6,995 CD: American English

Word count 6,000 CD: American English

New England boy, Arthur Gordon Pym, stows away on a whaling ship with its captain's son, Augustus. The two boys repeatedly find themselves on the brink of death or discovery and witness many terrifying events, including mutiny, cannibalism, and frantic pursuits.

Edgar Allan Poe's works, with their gothic and often obsessive themes, have had a significant influence on American literature.

This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates an intense interest in aesthetic issues and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. The Fall of the House of Usher describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In the Tell Tale Heart, a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as The Pit and the Pendulum and the Cask of Amontillado explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate.