Presents an annotated selection of writing by Edgar Allan Poe, including poems, stories, essays, and a novel, and includes documents related to Poe's life and career, as well as fourteen critical essays.

Edgar A. Poe: American Life (1809-1849): Note on the texts and annotations -- Acknowledgments -- Selected writings of Edgar Allan Poe: Poems: Tamerlane -- Dreams -- Spirits of the Dead -- Evening Star -- Imitation -- [Stanzas] -- Dream -- [Happiest Day] -- Lake-To -- Sonnet-to Science -- Al Aaraaf -- Introduction -- Fairy-Land [1] -- Fairy Land [2] -- [Alone] -- Helen -- Israfel -- Sleeper -- Valley of Unrest -- City in the Sea -- Coliseum -- Sonnet-Silence -- Dream-Land -- Raven -- Ulalume-A Ballad -- Bells -- Helen -- Dream within a Dream -- For Annie -- Eldorado -- Annabel Lee -- Tales and Sketches: Metzengerstein -- Loss of Breath -- Ms. Found in a Bottle -- Assignation -- Some Passages in the Life of a Lion [Lionizing] -- Shadow-A Parable -- Silence.-A Fable -- Berenice -- King Pest -- Ligeia -- How to Write a Blackwood Article: Predicament -- Man That Was Used Up -- Fall of the House of Usher -- William Wilson -- Man of the Crowd -- Murders in the Rue Morgue -- Descent into the Maelström -- Colloquy of Monos and Una -- Never Bet the Devil Your Head -- Oval Portrait -- Masque of the Red Death -- Pit and the Pendulum -- Tell-Tale Heart -- Gold-Bug -- Black Cat -- Premature Burial -- Purloined Letter -- Some Words with a Mummy -- Power of Words -- Imp of the Perverse -- Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar -- Cask of Amontillado -- Hop-Frog; or, Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs -- Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym -- From Eureka: Essay on the Material and Spirffual Universe -- Backgrounds and Contexts: Letters, Prefaces, Essays, and Reviews: To John Allan (Letter 13, May 29, 1829) -- Letter To B -- To Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham (Letter 37, May 4, 1833) -- Folio Club -- To Thomas W. White (Letter 42, April 30, 1835) -- From Theodore S. Fay [Review of Norman Leslie] -- From Morris Mattson [Review of Paul Ulric] -- John P. Kennedy to Poe (February 9, 1836) -- To John P. Kennedy (Letter 57, February 11, 1836) -- J.K. Paulding to T.W. White (March 3, 1836) -- From Joseph Rodman Drake-Fitz-Greene Halleck [Review of the Culprit Fay and Alnwick Castle] -- To Harrison Hall (Letter 74, September 2, 1836) -- From Robert M. Bird [Review of Sheppard Lee] -- From Baron de la Motte Fouqué [Review of Undine] -- To Philip P. Cooke (Letter 82, September 21, 1839) -- From Thomas Moore [Review of Alciphron] -- Preface (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque-1840) -- Prospectus of the Penn Magazine -- To William E. Burton (Letter 93, June 1, 1840) -- From Edward Lytton Bulwer [Review of Night and Morning] -- From Lambert A. Wilmer [Review of the Quacks of Helicon] -- Exordium to Critical Notices -- From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [Review of Ballads and Other Poems] -- Nathaniel Hawthorne [Review of Twice-Told Tales] April 1842, May 1842 -- To Joseph Evans Snodgrass (Letter 137, June 4, 1842) -- To James R. Lowell (Letter 179, July 2, 1844) -- From Marginalia -- James Russell Lowell: From Our Contributors. No. XVII. Edgar Allan Poe -- From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [Review of Poems on Slavery] -- From Thomas Hood [Review of Prose and Verse] -- [Review of Poe's Tales] -- Preface (Raven and other Poems) -- Philosophy of Composition -- To Philip P. Cooke (Letter 240, August 9, 1846) -- Nathaniel Hawthorne [Review of Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse] -- From James Russell Lowell [Review of a Fable for the Critics] -- From the Poetic Principle -- [Walter G. Bowen] -- Reviewer Reviewed / George R. Graham -- From the Late Edgar Allan Poe / Charles Baudelaire -- From Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and his Works / Walt Whitman -- From Edgar Poe's Significance -- Transcendentalism Am) Alternative Romanticism / Frederic Henry Hedge -- [On Immanuel Kant and German Transcendentalism] / Friedrich Schlegel: Fragments: From Lyceum -- From Athenaeum -- From Dialogue on Poetry / August Wilhelm Schlegel: Dramatic Lectures: From Lecture III -- From Lecture XI -- From Lecture XVII -- From Lecture XXIII -- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter: Preschool for Aesthetics: From the Seventh Program. On Humoristic Poetry -- Sciences of the Mind: Johann G. Spurzheim: Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim -- From VI. Organ of the Propensity to Destroy, or of Destructiveness -- Orson S. Fowler -- Fowler's Practical Phrenology -- From 21. Ideality -- Phrenological Chart -- Thomas C. Upham: From Outlines of Imperfection and Disordered Action -- Popular Fiction: Blackwoods and Tile Sensation Tale / Anonymous -- Extracts From Gosschen's Diary / Anonymous -- Buried Alive / William Maginn -- Man in the Bell -- South and Slavery / James E. Heath -- Southern Literature / [Nathaniel Beverley Tucker] -- Slavery / Poe -- To Beverley Tucker (Letter 62, May 2, 1836) / J.V. Ridgely: Authorship of the "Paulding- Drayton Review" -- Poe to Joseph Evans Snodgrass (Letter 95, June 17, 1840) -- Criticism / Floyd Stovall -- From Poe's Debt to Coleridge / Robert Colin Mclean -- From Poetic Theory / Richard Wilbur -- From the House of Poe / James W. Gargano -- Question of Poe's Narrators / Joseph J. Moldenhauer -- From Murder as a Fine Art: Basic Connections Between Poe's Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision / Paul John Eakin -- From Poe's Sense of an Ending / Grace Farrell -- Quest of Arthur Gordon Pym / Liahna Armstrong -- Shadow's Shadow: Motif of the Double in Edgar Allan Poe's "Purloined letter" / Barton Levi St. Armand -- From the "Mysteries" Of Edgar Poe: Quest for a Monomyth in Gothic Literature / Joseph N. Riddel -- From the "Crypt" of Edgar Poe / J. Gerald Kennedy -- From Phantasms of Death in Poe's Fiction / John Carlos Rowe -- From Antebellum Slavery and Modern Criticism: Edgar Allan Poe's Pym and "Purloined Letter" / Terence Whalen -- From Average Racism: Poe, Slavery, and the Wages of Literary Nationalism / John T. Irwin -- Detective Fiction as High Art: Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson on "Purloined Letter.".