Tales Of Horror (Alma Classics)

Description

A murderer is forced to reveal his crime by the sound of a beating heart, a mysterious figure wreaks havoc among a party of noblemen during the time of the plague, a grieving lover awakens to find himself clutching a box of his beloved blood-stained teeth, a man is obsessed with the fear of being buried alive - these are only some of the memorable characters and stories included in this volume, which exemplify Poe's inventiveness and natural talent as a storyteller.Immensely popular both during and after his lifetime, and a powerful influence on generations of writers and film-makers to this day, Edgar Allan Poe is still counted among the greatest short-story writers of all time and seen as one of the initiators of the detective, horror and science-fiction genres.

Author description

Born in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was brought up by the Allan merchant family after the death of his mother and being abandoned by his father. While studying at the University of Virginia he started self-publishing volumes of poetry, and after a stint in the military began writing essays and fiction for a living. He died of unknown causes - with rabies, cholera, alcoholism and tuberculosis among the hypotheses - in Baltimore.

Table of contents

Metzengerstein, MS Found in a Bottle, Berenice, Morella, Ligeia, The Devil in the Belfry, The Fall of the House of Usher, William Wilson, The Man of the Crowd, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, A Descent into the Maelstrom, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, Eleonora, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, The Premature Burial, The Oblong Box, The Purloined Letter, Some Words with a Mummy, The Oval Portrait, The Imp of the Perverse, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, The Sphinx