The Portable Poe compiles Poe's greatest writings: tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge, murder, and mystery, including "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the world's first detective story. In addition, this volume offers letters, articles, criticism, visionary poetry, and a selection of random "opinions" on fancy and the imagination, music and poetry, intuition and sundry other topics.



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.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was born in Boston and orphaned at an early age. Taken in by a couple from Richmond, Virginia, he spent a semester at the University of Virginia but could not afford to stay longer. After joining the Army and matriculating as a cadet, he started his literary career with the anonymous publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems, before working as a literary critic. His life was dotted with scandals, such as purposefully getting himself court-martialled to ensure dismissal from the Army, being discharged from his job at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond after being found drunk by his boss, and secretly marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia (listed twenty-one on the marriage certificate). His work took him to both New York City and Baltimore, where he died at the age of forty, two years after Virginia.

The Portable Edgar Allan PoeIntroduction by J. Gerald Kennedy

Chronology

A Note on Texts

Tales

Predicaments

MS. Found in a Bottle (1832)

A Descent into the Maelstrom (1841)

The Masque of the Red Death (1842)

The Pit and the Pendulum (1842)

The Premature Burial (1844)

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)

Bereavements

The Assignation (1834)

Berenice (1835)

Morella (1835)

Ligeia (1838)

The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)

Eleonora (1841)

The Oval Portrait (1842)

Antagonisms

Metzengerstein (1832)

William Wilson (1839)

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

The Black Cat (1843)

The Imp of the Perverse (1845)

The Cask of Amontillado (1846)

Hop-Frog (1849)

Mysteries

The Man of the Crowd (1840)

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)

The Gold-Bug (1843)

The Oblong Box (1844)

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844)

The Purloined Letter (1844)

Grotesqueries

The Man That Was Used Up (1839)

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845)

Some Words with a Mummy (1845)

Poems

The Lake—To—(1827)

Sonnet—To Science (1829)

Fairy-Land (1829)

Introduction (1831)

"Alone" (1875)

To Helen (1831)

The Sleeper (1831)

Israfel (1831)

The Valley of Unrest (1831)

The City in the Sea (1831)

Lenore (1843)

Sonnet—Silence (1840)

Dream-Land (1844)

The Raven (1845)

Ulalume—A Ballad (1847)

The Bells (1849)

A Dream within a Dream (1849)

For Annie (1849)

Eldorado (1849)

To My Mother (1849)

Annabel Lee (1849)

Letters

To John Allan, March 19, 1827

To John Allan, December 22, 1828

To John Allan, January 3, 1831

To John Allan, April 12, 1833

To Thomas W. White, April 30, 1835

To Maria and Virginia Clemm, August 29, 1835

To Philip P. Cooke, September 21, 1839

To William E. Burton, June 1, 1840

To Joseph Evans Snodgrass, April 1, 1841

To Frederick W. Thomas, June 26, 1841

To Frederick W. Thomas, February 3, 1842

To T. H. Chivers, September 27, 1842

To Frederick W. Thomas and Jesse E. Dow, March 16, 1843

To James Russell Lowell, March 30, 1844

To Maria Clemm, April 7, 1844

To James Russell Lowell, July 2, 1844

To Evert A. Duyckinck, November 13, 1845

To Virginia Poe, June 12, 1846

To Philip P. Cooke, August 9, 1846

To N. P. Willis, December 30, 1846

To Marie L. Shew, January 29, 1847

To George W. Eveleth, January 4, 1848

To George W. Eveleth, February 29, 1848

To Sarah Helen Whitman, October 1, 1848

To Annie L. Richmond, November 16, 1848

To Frederick W. Thomas, February 14, 1849

To Maria Clemm, July 7, 1849

To Maria Clemm, September 18, 1849

Critical Principles

On Unity of Effect

On Plot in Narrative

On the Prose Tale

On the Design of Fiction

The Object of Poetry (from "Letter to B—")

"The Philosophy of Composition"

The Effect of Rhyme

"The Poetic Principle" (excerpts)

American Criticism

Observations

Literary Nationalism

"Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House"

American Literary Independence

The Soul and the Self

Imagination and Insight

Poetical Irritability

Genius and Proportionate Intellect

Reason and Government

Adaptation and the Plots of God

Works of Genius

National Literature and Imitation

Language and Thought

Magazine Literature in America

The Name of the Nation

The Unwritable Book

Imagination

Art and the Soul

Superiority and Suffering

Matter, Spirit, and Divine Will

Notes

Selected Bibliography