The Portable Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was born in Boston and orphaned at an early age. Taken in by a couple from Richmond, Virginia, he spent a semester at the University of Virginia but could not afford to stay longer. After joining the Army and matriculating as a cadet, he started his literary career with the anonymous publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems, before working as a literary critic. His life was dotted with scandals, such as purposefully getting himself court-martialled to ensure dismissal from the Army, being discharged from his job at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond after being found drunk by his boss, and secretly marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia (listed twenty-one on the marriage certificate). His work took him to both New York City and Baltimore, where he died at the age of forty, two years after Virginia.

The Portable Edgar Allan PoeIntroduction by J. Gerald Kennedy
Chronology
A Note on Texts
Tales


Predicaments
MS. Found in a Bottle (1832)
A Descent into the Maelstrom (1841)
The Masque of the Red Death (1842)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1842)
The Premature Burial (1844)
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845)


Bereavements
The Assignation (1834)
Berenice (1835)
Morella (1835)
Ligeia (1838)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
Eleonora (1841)
The Oval Portrait (1842)


Antagonisms
Metzengerstein (1832)
William Wilson (1839)
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
The Black Cat (1843)
The Imp of the Perverse (1845)
The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
Hop-Frog (1849)


Mysteries
The Man of the Crowd (1840)
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
The Gold-Bug (1843)
The Oblong Box (1844)
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844)
The Purloined Letter (1844)


Grotesqueries
The Man That Was Used Up (1839)
The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845)
Some Words with a Mummy (1845)


Poems


The Lake—To—(1827)
Sonnet—To Science (1829)
Fairy-Land (1829)
Introduction (1831)
"Alone" (1875)
To Helen (1831)
The Sleeper (1831)
Israfel (1831)
The Valley of Unrest (1831)
The City in the Sea (1831)
Lenore (1843)
Sonnet—Silence (1840)
Dream-Land (1844)
The Raven (1845)
Ulalume—A Ballad (1847)
The Bells (1849)
A Dream within a Dream (1849)
For Annie (1849)
Eldorado (1849)
To My Mother (1849)
Annabel Lee (1849)


Letters


To John Allan, March 19, 1827
To John Allan, December 22, 1828
To John Allan, January 3, 1831
To John Allan, April 12, 1833
To Thomas W. White, April 30, 1835
To Maria and Virginia Clemm, August 29, 1835
To Philip P. Cooke, September 21, 1839
To William E. Burton, June 1, 1840
To Joseph Evans Snodgrass, April 1, 1841
To Frederick W. Thomas, June 26, 1841
To Frederick W. Thomas, February 3, 1842
To T. H. Chivers, September 27, 1842
To Frederick W. Thomas and Jesse E. Dow, March 16, 1843
To James Russell Lowell, March 30, 1844
To Maria Clemm, April 7, 1844
To James Russell Lowell, July 2, 1844
To Evert A. Duyckinck, November 13, 1845
To Virginia Poe, June 12, 1846
To Philip P. Cooke, August 9, 1846
To N. P. Willis, December 30, 1846
To Marie L. Shew, January 29, 1847
To George W. Eveleth, January 4, 1848
To George W. Eveleth, February 29, 1848
To Sarah Helen Whitman, October 1, 1848
To Annie L. Richmond, November 16, 1848
To Frederick W. Thomas, February 14, 1849
To Maria Clemm, July 7, 1849
To Maria Clemm, September 18, 1849


Critical Principles


On Unity of Effect
On Plot in Narrative
On the Prose Tale
On the Design of Fiction
The Object of Poetry (from "Letter to B—")
"The Philosophy of Composition"
The Effect of Rhyme
"The Poetic Principle" (excerpts)
American Criticism


Observations


Literary Nationalism
"Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House"
American Literary Independence
The Soul and the Self
Imagination and Insight
Poetical Irritability
Genius and Proportionate Intellect
Reason and Government
Adaptation and the Plots of God
Works of Genius
National Literature and Imitation
Language and Thought
Magazine Literature in America
The Name of the Nation
The Unwritable Book
Imagination
Art and the Soul
Superiority and Suffering
Matter, Spirit, and Divine Will


Notes
Selected Bibliography