Edgar Allan Poe Complete Tales and Poems

Fraud! A scam! This is not the complete poems and tales of EAP. It is a collection of poems, and a couple of essays and notes despite what is promised. There is no Fall of the House of Usher, Pit and Pendulum etc. I will be returning it immediately. If you buy this you are as much a fool as I was.

Creased paperback that reads like its just been printed off a website. There are parts of text that i assume were meant to be hyperlinks and you eventually find what it is meant to link to 20 pages later inserted randomly into another poem. Poem titles start on one page then finish 3 pages later after something else. The contents page holds no actual relevance to where everything is in the book. Very disappointed.

Cloth-bound and very nice to stroke.Haven't read it yet but it's so hefty that I could probably use it to kill myself with when I get horribly depressed after I do.Don't expect to be fitting this in your pocket and taking it on a train unless you're MC Hammer, probably avoid putting it in a backpack if you don't want an extra leg-day in the exercise routine and a slipped disk or two, either.It's a book you keep at home and smugly explain to the plebs that Kindles may end up cheaper in the long run, and may be more portable than some books, but your Poe volume can beat them in a fight 10-on-1.Lovely.

The Fall of the House of Usher and The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan PoeIn The Purloined Letter, Poe is at his level headed and rational best. The narrator and Dupin are sitting by the fireside one evening when the Prefect of Parisian Police bursts in. He has a big problem on his hands: an influential woman has had an incriminating letter stolen by the Minister D. The police are certain it's in his hotel but they've applied all possible scientific method to searching the place and still haven't found the letter:"We not only opened every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume, not contenting ourselves with a mere shake...we also measured the thickness of every bookcover, with the most accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of the microscope."Soon the police have exhausted their scientific method. Thankfully, Dupin is on hand to solve the mystery using psychology, produce the letter and explain (with a forgivable amount of smugness) precisely how he managed it.The Fall of the House of Usher is an entirely different proposition. The narrator receives an unexpected letter from an old friend and hurries to his home. He hasn't seen Roderick Usher for many years and is deeply disturbed by the house and by the state that Roderick has fallen into. He has declined into a pale, melancholy shadow of his earlier self and his sister Madeline is on the verge of succumbing to a wasting disease the doctors cannot identify:"A sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread his emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears."Madeline dies not long after and the narrator helps his old friend to place her coffin in the vault. Roderick's decline worsens and one terrible night he bangs on the bedroom door of his old friend and cries out that in burying his sister he might possibly have been a little hasty...Two very different tales from the nineteenth-century master of chill and suspense. Plus much else besides. Enjoy them on the train rattling home from work or by the fireside on a dark and stormy night. Either way you'll be mesmerised.Enjoy!

Really pleased with this purchase.Beautiful book, fabric cover, lovely paper, well presented and complete with protective presentation box.The works of EAP speak for themselves - "Evermore" (to parody the man himself's best loved poem).A lovely present - but I'm keeping my copy!