A WRITER'S NAME usually brings to mind a definite place, country or person. Edgar Allan Poe's name evokes no such clear image but rather a mood, a dim unquiet atmosphere of dungeons and dank tombs, of ill-fated beings, doomed decaying houses and unearthly mysteries.

Poe was our first great writer of spine-chilling, macabre, and grisly tales —and he is still the master. He also wrote our first detective and science fiction. Even more than that he was a brilliant critic and a remarkable poet.

This volume includes his best stories —"The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Pit and The Pendulum," "The Purloined Letter," and many others—with a selection of Poe% choicest poems. In addition, Poe himself is the subject of a fascinating introduction, written especially for this book by Laura Benet, author of The Young Edgar Allan Poe.
--front flap