The Raven

Tales and Poems

Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
 
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro’s favorites, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ray Russell’s short story “Sardonicus,” considered by Stephen King to be “perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written,” to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. Featuring original cover art by Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, these stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.

The Raven

The Raven: Tales and Poems is a landmark new anthology of Poe’s work, which defied convention, shocked readers, and confounded critics. This selection of Poe’s writings demonstrates the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. “The Fall of the House of Usher” describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Cask of Amontillado” explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. The title narrative poem, maybe Poe’s most famous work, follows a man’s terrifying descent into madness after the loss of a lover.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, USA, in 1809. Poe, short story writer, editor and critic, he is best known for his macabre tales and as the progenitor of the detective story. He died in 1849, in mysterious circumstances, at the age of forty.

J. Gerald Kennedy is Boyd Professor of English Emeritus at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Poe Studies Association. His books on Poe include Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing (1987), “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” and the Abyss of Interpretation (1995), and several edited volumes including A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe (2001), Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race (2001; with Liliane Weissberg), and Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture (2012; with Jerome McGann). His major contribution to American literary studies is Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe (2016), written with the support of fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also published Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity (1993), and he edited the Penguin Classics edition of The Life of Black Hawk (2008). He has appeared in many Poe documentary films, including The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe(1994) for the A&E Biography series and Eric Stange’s film for the PBS American Masterpiece series, Edgar A. Poe: Buried Alive (2017). View titles by Edgar Allan Poe

About

Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
 
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro’s favorites, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ray Russell’s short story “Sardonicus,” considered by Stephen King to be “perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written,” to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. Featuring original cover art by Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, these stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.

The Raven

The Raven: Tales and Poems is a landmark new anthology of Poe’s work, which defied convention, shocked readers, and confounded critics. This selection of Poe’s writings demonstrates the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. “The Fall of the House of Usher” describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Cask of Amontillado” explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate. The title narrative poem, maybe Poe’s most famous work, follows a man’s terrifying descent into madness after the loss of a lover.

Author

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, USA, in 1809. Poe, short story writer, editor and critic, he is best known for his macabre tales and as the progenitor of the detective story. He died in 1849, in mysterious circumstances, at the age of forty.

J. Gerald Kennedy is Boyd Professor of English Emeritus at Louisiana State University and a past president of the Poe Studies Association. His books on Poe include Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing (1987), “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” and the Abyss of Interpretation (1995), and several edited volumes including A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe (2001), Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race (2001; with Liliane Weissberg), and Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture (2012; with Jerome McGann). His major contribution to American literary studies is Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe (2016), written with the support of fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also published Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity (1993), and he edited the Penguin Classics edition of The Life of Black Hawk (2008). He has appeared in many Poe documentary films, including The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe(1994) for the A&E Biography series and Eric Stange’s film for the PBS American Masterpiece series, Edgar A. Poe: Buried Alive (2017). View titles by Edgar Allan Poe

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