Tales of Mystery and Terror

PUFFIN CLASSICS

TALES OF MYSTERY AND TERROR

EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–49) was born in Boston. Both his parents were actors of no great renown; both suffered from tuberculosis; and both died in 1811. Young Edgar Poe was taken in by John Allan, a wealthy merchant – hence his middle name.

He had a happy childhood as the only child of a prosperous family, and he excelled at school in languages and athletics. Then in 1826 he went to the University of Virginia. He spent his first term on wine, women and song – and provoked a massive row with his step-father, which ended with Poe running away and joining the army (under the name of Edgar A. Perry).

A few years later, Mrs Allan begged her husband, on her death-bed, to find their estranged son. He did, but after her death the relationship between the two men did not improve. Allan remarried and his new wife hated Edgar.

By 1831 Poe was out in the world, alone, the destitute author of three volumes of poetry which hardly anyone was reading. Then he found a kind of family. He discovered an aunt, Maria Clemm, and he made her a surrogate mother; he also married her daughter, his cousin Virginia, in 1837, when she was only fourteen years old.

The family moved around from place to place, as Edgar found and lost jobs. Occasionally he got a story printed, but the pay was terrible, and they were often freezing and close to starving. Virginia was by now critically ill – and Poe was virtually an alcoholic.

In 1847, Virginia died, and Edgar Poe began a round of courting wealthy widows: he was sometimes engaged to several at once. His writing – especially his poetry – grew more tortured. ‘I dwelt alone in a world of moan,’ he said. In short, he was more or less mad, and he was still drinking.

George Bernard Shaw rated him ‘the finest of finest of artists’; but he died alone, in pain and squalor. Almost his last words were: ‘I wish to God someone would blow my damned brains out.’ It is not difficult to see why some of his best stories are the grotesque and macabre tales in this volume.

Some other Puffin Classics to enjoy

LORNA DOONE

R. D. Blackmore

JANE EYRE

Charlotte Brontë

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Emily Brontë

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Charles Dickens

EDGAR ALLAN POE

Tales of Mystery and Terror

PUFFIN BOOKS

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This collection published in Puffin Books 1990

Reissued in this edition 1994

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Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-194253-7

CONTENTS

The Sphinx

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Oval Portrait

MS Found in a Bottle

A Descent into the Maelström

The Tell-Tale Heart

The Oblong Box

The Masque of the Red Death

Hop-Frog

Some Words With a Mummy

William Wilson

The Black Cat

The Pit and the Pendulum

THE SPHINX

During the dread reign of cholera in New York, I had accepted the invitation of a relative to spend a fortnight with him in the retirement of his cottage ornée on the banks of the Hudson. We had here around us all the ordinary means of summer amusement; and what with rambling in the woods, sketching, boating, fishing, bathing, music, and books, we should have passed the time pleasantly enough, but for the fearful intelligence which reached us every morning from the populous city. Not a day elapsed which did not bring us news of the decease of some acquaintance. Then, as the fatality increased, we learned to expect daily the loss of some friend. At length we trembled at the approach of every messenger. The very air from the South seemed to us redolent with death. That palsying thought, indeed, took entire possession of my soul. I could neither speak, think, nor dream of anything else. My host was of a less excitable temperament, and, although greatly depressed in spirits, exerted himself to sustain my own. His richly philosophical intellect was not at any time affected by unrealities. To the substances of terror he was sufficiently alive, but of its shadows he had no apprehension.

His endeavors to arouse me from the condition of abnormal gloom into which I had fallen, were frustrated, in great measure, by certain volumes which I had found in his library. These were of a character to force into germination whatever seeds of hereditary superstition lay latent in my bosom. I had been reading these books without his knowledge, and thus he was often at a loss to account for the forcible impressions which had been made upon my fancy.

A favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omens – a belief which, at this one epoch of my life, I was almost seriously disposed to defend.