I was introduced to Edgar Allan Poe as a child. My father had me memorize the eternally beautiful poem, Annabelle Lee. I fell in love with his stories as narrated by Vincent Price.

One day, my mother heard me crying in my room and came to investigate. She found me in a corner, blankets draped over the windows, a sheet over my head, listening to The Tell Tale Heart, and sobbing in fright. She asked me, "Why are you scaring yourself like that?" And I replied, "Because I love his stories so much." It was the beginning of a life long love affair.

I have since seen the home in Baltimore Maryland that Poe wrote most of his work in, and visited his gravesite, where, every year, mysteriously appears a bottle of Brandy and a dozen Red roses.

If you haven't read any of Edgar Allan Poe's works, I'm sorry for you. ( )

'Permanent loan' from my father. One of my early introductions to the genre ( )

Man. This was a struggle. The last several hundred pages (400) were just hard. I think at one point I was ready to call for a DNF, but since this is on my horror list read I wanted to finish it. Now I just feel stabby.

So Poe did write some great works (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, and the Raven) but he wrote a lot of...not so good poems, terribly long meandering stories, and essays. I think my brain has tried to block out a good portion of this because it just got mad at me at one point last night. It wanted to go to sleep, but I was all, no you will finish this because I am sick of this being on my currently reading list for Booklikes and Goodreads.

I would honestly say that this complete works is good to have in your library though. You can pull it down and just read any of Poe's stories instead of having to pay for single stories. But, I can see why some people rather do that, because this thing is pretty big, it takes up valuable shelf space, and a good 70 percent of the works are not good.

I honestly feel like for the most part when you look at everything Poe has done, he was kind of a one trick pony. Most of his stories revolve around similar themes, losing a loved one, someone going slowly or not so slowly mad, something supernatural making an appearance, etc.

My favorite poems from this collection were definitely Annabel Lee, and The Raven.

Here is the Annabel Lee poem:
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;--
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee--
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night
Chilling my Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me:--
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, chilling
And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we--
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea--
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

Everything else....no.

My favorite stories were ones I had already read before. I skipped over them, but honestly I did go back and read them again later because none of the other stories stuck with me. My favorites are: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, and the Cask of the Amontillado.

I really did not care for any of the essays, and frankly an essay maybe in my mind is not long. His essay on Eureka: A Prose Poem was about 40 freaking pages. I just felt horror trying to wade through that. ( )

My goodness the man's so modern, the following is written in 1836, but what could be more apposite for the Internet Age and the age of Self-Publishing and the age of Academia's Publish or Perish.

Edgar Allan Poe was an early employee of the “Southern Literary Messenger” of Richmond, Virginia. In 1836 he wrote a review of a legal tome titled “Reports of Cases Decided in the High Court of Chancery of Maryland”, and his first sentence provided a harsh assessment:

We cannot perceive any sufficient reason for the publication of this book....Now, the enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information, by throwing in the reader’s way piles of lumber, in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed. In no department have the complaints of this evil been louder or more just, than in the law.

from the wonderful Quote Investigator, of which, no doubt, Poe would have whole-heartedly approved. http://quoteinvestigator.com/

Edgar Allen Poe. Not much else needs to be said. This is classic mystery, horror, thriller, adventure, and scifi. This is Goth kid staple poetry.