Series:

Modern Library Classics (eBook)

2 total works

Cover of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Poe found the germ of the story he would develop into ARTHUR GORDON PYM in 1836 in a newspaper account of the shipwreck and subsequent rescue of the two men on board. Published in 1838, this rousing sea adventure follows New England boy, Pym, who 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. Poe imbued this deliberately popular tale with such allegorical richness, biblical imagery, and psychological insights that the tale has come to influence writers as various as Melville, James, Verne and Nabokov.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Cover of The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Collected in these two volumes are Poe's legendary tales of terror that attest to his stylistic brilliance in evoking an atmosphere of gloom and obsession. Creatures, eyes, coffins, walls--all are symbols in Poe's efforts to create an aura of evil. What reader would not share the anxiety of the traveler in The Fall of the House of Usher, who upon his first glimpse of the house, finds an -insufferable gloom pervading my spirit...an utter depression of the soul...an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart-? In volume 2 his nightmarish visions take us down untraveled paths revealing the dark side of the human experience.