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The Raven and Other Poems and Tales

edgar allan poe daniel alan green

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Edgar Allan Poe shaped the development of both the detective story and science-fiction genres and his poems remain among the favourites of American literature. This illustrated collection contains familiar and popular tales and poems including, The House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum.

119 pages, Hardcover

First published January 29,1845

This edition

Format
119 pages, Hardcover
Published
October 1, 2001 by Bulfinch
ISBN
9780821227725
ASIN
0821227726
Language
English

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About the author

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edgar allan poe

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The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer's oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America's first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe's reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe's stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author's name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe's sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls' school. Within three years of Poe's birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe's siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe's handwriting on the backs of Allan's ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 98 votes)
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98 reviews All reviews
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MadLane
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I rarely read poems, but because this is Edgar Allan Poe (happy birthday, mate), I knew I had to read this. He really is a master of words. I found his subject in poems almost as fascinating as some of his short stories.

These are my favorites:
The Raven (of course, duh), Spirits of the Dead, Annabel Lee, For Annie, and The Bells (this one's really fun to read aloud).
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Matsuma_
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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What a joy to revisit the poems of Edgar Allan Poe with a group of readers who brought to them thoughts and ideas that enhanced the reading. I love Poe's grasp of mythology, his use of rhyme and rhythm, alliteration, and, yes, even his morose musings. He seems to me to lay a tortured soul in front of us and ask, "What would you do with this? What could you do with it, but mourn?"

I have written individual reviews for The Raven, The Bells and Annabel Lee. I will not revisit them here, but I would like to speak to some of the lesser known poems that touched a chord with me.

To Annie:
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

Poe sees life as so much torture and death as a release. And, death is portrayed as an illusion. The onlookers think he is "dead", but he is really in the arms of the woman he loved and lost. And...

And ah! let it never
Be foolishly said
That my room it is gloomy
And narrow my bed;
For man never slept
In a different bed—
And, to sleep, you must slumber
In just such a bed.

So, death is inevitable and there is no rest in life...to slumber you must die. It will come to all of us, and he seems to say that while it might look gloomy or confining or sad, it is not. It is simply a release from this world's toil and it is not just his lot, but that of every man.

Alone:
And all I lov'd--I lov'd alone.
I thought this one of the most moving of the poems. There is a real sense of angst in his recognition that he sees the world differently than others and that they cannot understand what is beneath his surface, in his mind. Even his loves cannot be shared or understood by others. They see fluffy clouds, he sees demons in the sky. He cannot explain why the world is darker to him, but he knows that his view separates him from humanity at large.

To Science:
I took this to be more about reality vs. creativity (imagination) than science literally. He cannot help reality imposing itself upon him, and truth destroys the comfort of myth. With science, he must face death as a reality; with myth, he can imagine that he is still able to hold and share the world of his beloved. I thought about Eden--after all, we humans lost Eden because Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge.

And finally,
Dream Within a Dream
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

The ultimate question (especially for Poe), "what is reality?" If hope has flown in a dream or vision is it less gone? Good question. If we feel something deeply, is it not real for us? How do we distinguish between what is and what was and what might be? If we wake on the morning after the loss of someone we love and believe we feel the weight of their body in the bed, can they have been there for that moment? Are there two worlds, ours and theirs, and can we bridge the two? And if there are two worlds, which of them is real...are they the dream, or are we?

There were several of the poems that just left me flat and did not speak to me at all, but for the most part I love his ability to tap into his sorrow and isolation and see his poems as an attempt to connect and reveal himself. He challenges our intellect, makes us ask questions, and what more can a poem do than that? I hope in death he was indeed folded into the arms of his Virginia or granted the gentle sleep that eluded him in life. There is no writer ever whose life and work were more intertwined.
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dakuchonekobing
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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What does one say about Poe's poetry besides that it's wonderful? The feelings conveyed, the little word games, the deep denseness of The Raven or Tamerlane...

Another thing I need to shout out though, is the translation of my copy. It's exceptional, and so is the foreword and the afterword (including one of Virginia Poe's poems, too!). I remember begging my mother for this book as a 14 year old and boy has it paid for itself considering the countless times I've reread it since. Truly one of my favourite possessions.
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MonroeAnime
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I think I would've enjoyed this a bit more if I had read it instead of listened to it, or if the narrator had been a different one.
Still beautifully dark and atmospheric though.
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suryanshkalia
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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As a self-proclaimed (albeit a bit hypocritical) Edgar Allen Poe Lover, I HAD to read this and see if my theoretical love holds up.
And the verdict is......
it did!
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anetxi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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El cuervo siempre va a ser mi cosa favorita de este autor, lo quise releer y me encontré que mi versión de iBooks venía con sus poemas, no se nada de poesía o algo por el estilo pero hubo muchos que me gustaron, so... I finished
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RONin63
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

I don’t normally read books of poetry, but I needed to read one with at least 24 poems for a book challenge. So, inspired by the Halloween season, I read this book of poems, which very fortunately has 26 poems.
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