Tales Of Mystery & Imagination

BEAUTIFULLY BOUND WITH HIGH-QUALITY MATERIALS, STAMPED IN GOLD, & IN BEAUTIFUL CONDITION
THE TELL-TALE HEART, A DESCENT INTO MAELSTROM, THE PIT & THE PENDULUM, RED DEATH, THE GOLD BUG, THE OVAL PORTRAIT, BERENICE, THE RUE MORGUE, THE PURLOINED LETTER, THE HOUSE OF USHER, AND MANY MORE

This stunning book contains some of Poe's most monumental tales bound between a stunning cover. Includes some of Poe's most well-known works and many you may have never even heard of. Heavily illustrated from cover to cover by Arthur Rackham. A book like this should last well over a century with good care.

The overall condition of this book is excellent, quite simply the nicest one I have ever owned nor seen offered. The covers and spine display superb colors and brightness, the pages are clean and crisp, and the acid-free paper quality is incredible. It retains a strong and sturdy spine. For an edition that is now 36 years old, it is about as well-kept as you will ever see.

Tales of Mystery & Imagination (often rendered as Tales of Mystery and Imagination) is a popular title for posthumous compilations of writings by American author, essayist, and poet Edgar Allan Poe and was the first complete collection of his works explicitly restricting itself to his suspenseful and related tales.

In 1839, a collection of his strange tales was published during Poe's lifetime, but it did not include some highly regarded stories written later, including "The Rue Morgue" and "A Descent into the Maelström." The first posthumous collection of Poe's works was compiled in 1850 and included a memoir from Rufus Wilmot Griswold, but this did not confine itself to his tales of suspense and related stories. Several collections of Poe's prose and poetry followed. The precursor to Tales of Mystery and Imagination was a collection of Poe's works entitled Tales of Mystery, Imagination, and Humor. The title "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" was first used by "The World's Classics," London, and printed by Grant Richard, 48 Leicester Sq. in 1902. The title of this collection was then adopted by Padraic Colum in 1908, given the growing reputation of Poe's taste for suspense, especially in the context of what his French critic M. Brunetiere called events "on the margin" of life. In keeping with its title, the original collection deliberately excluded Poe's poems, comedies, and essays. In his introduction to the 1908 edition, Colum cites a reason for his adoption of this selection: his opinion that "tales" as opposed to "short stories" were so short that they tended to lack descriptions of socially essential experiences. Colum hence also left out two works as too lengthy, these being The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall."

Colum's 1908 collection of Poe's tales was published as a book specifically aimed at the general reading public by the influential publishing house of Geoffrey Newnes Ltd. using its Home Library Book Company as part of "John O'London's" Home Library.

Further development
The 1908 version of Tales of Mystery and Imagination has been reproduced many times since under this same title by several publishers worldwide for over 100 years. Colum's selection of tales forms the backbone of subsequent versions under this same name. Everyman's Library produced copies of the 1908 version for several decades. The title of the 1908 book, together with its formula of compiling Poe's most bewildering tales into a single volume, continues to be used by other publishers.

In 1919 London's George G. Harrap and Co. published an edition illustrated by Harry Clarke in black and white. In 1923 an expanded edition was released with many more illustrations, including eight color plates. In 1935 the artist Arthur Rackham produced another illustrated version of Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

A musical album entitled Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project uses the same title. It contains tracks based on three of these tales and several others, including poetry, with some narration by Orson Welles. Alan Parsons Project also used the title "The Gold Bug" for a track on their The Turn of a Friendly Card album. The title, and Poe himself, are also mentioned in the Van Morrison song "Fair Play" from the album Veedon Fleece.