Synopses & Reviews
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by award-winning director 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 Toros favorites, from Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Ray Russells short story Sardonicus,” considered by Stephen King to be perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written,” to Shirley Jacksons 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 Haunting of Hill House
The classic supernatural thriller by an author who helped define the genre. First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a haunting;' Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powersand soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
Synopsis
A fully revised collection of Poe's work
The first new edition of this landmark anthology since 1945 presents a more complicated, perverse, and culturally engaged Poe. Along with the author's familiar masterworks in poetry and fiction, this new Portable Poe includes satirical tales that reflect his critique of American culture.
Synopsis
The Portable Poe compiles Poe's greatest writings: tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge, murder, and mystery, including "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the world's first detective story. In addition, this volume offers letters, articles, criticism, visionary poetry, and a selection of random "opinions" on fancy and the imagination, music and poetry, intuition and sundry other topics.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe compiles Poe's greatest writings: tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge, murder, and mystery, including The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the world's first detective story. In addition, this volume offers letters, articles, criticism, visionary poetry, and a selection of random opinions on fancy and the imagination, music and poetry, intuition and sundry other topics.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
A fully revised collection of Poes work
The first new edition of this landmark anthology since 1945 presents a more complicated, perverse, and culturally engaged Poe. Along with the authors familiar masterworks in poetry and fiction, this new Portable Poe includes satirical tales that reflect his critique of American culture.
About the Author
Shirley Jackson (19161965) received wide critical acclaim for her short story "The Lottery," which was first published in the
New Yorker in 1948. Her novels include
We Have Always Lived in the Castle,
The Sundial, and T
he Haunting of Hill House.
Guillermo del Toro is a film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer. He is best known as the director of the Academy Awardwinning film Pans Labyrinth and the Hellboy franchise. His latest film, Pacific Rim, premieres in the summer of 2013. He is also the foreword author to the Penguin Classics edition of The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen.
Table of Contents
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe Introduction 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 LakeTo(1827)
SonnetTo 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)
SonnetSilence (1840)
Dream-Land (1844)
The Raven (1845)
UlalumeA 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