Book description
Locked doors, sealed cavities, bricked-up alchoves and premature burial
close in on Poe's narrators as they, like their victims, are cut off
from light, air and human society. Partly, Poe's stories resonate as the
'disordered chambers' of the narrator's minds, but also they suggest
archetypal, if extreme, psychological states. Yet Poe was an incurable
hoaxer, and in telling some wonderful short stories he also told some
excessively tall tales. Horror stories, science fiction, detective
stories and satirical sketches - the variety of Poe will chill and
delight. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was born in Boston, Massachusetts
and was abandonned by his father and saw his mother die in the first two
years of his life. During careers in the US army and as an editor he
frequently saw his works published, with 'The Raven' an immediate
success in 1845. He died in Baltimore in 1849 from 'congestion of the
brain'.
