“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain;but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” Of all the American masters, Edgar Allan Poe staked out perhaps the most unique and vivid reputation as a master of the macabre. Born in Boston in 1809 to a pair of actors, dead at the age of forty, the forerunner of modern American horror continues to loom large in the American imagination. Revered not only for the eerie beauty of his prose but his formidable satire, Poe was a prolific writer of poetry, short stories, and criticism in addition to his novels. The best of his works of horror is collected in this volume, including classic, timeless stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Oval Portrait," as well as lesser known (yet equally haunting) poems such as Berenice and The Imp of the Perverse, and the quintessential The Raven. “All of Poe’s fiction,” G. R. Thompson writes, “and the poems as well, can be