The Pit and the Pendulum

*Illustrated

*Includes Table of Contents

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is one of America’s greatest and most dark and mysterious writers. The circumstances surrounding his untimely death are still unknown, as is what made him tick. Part of the American Romantic Movement, Poe is best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, and Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story. Long before Sherlock Holmes became famous, Poe invented the genre of detective fiction and contributed to science fiction. Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television today, and the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens got their name from his most famous poem. 

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic, a genre he followed to appease the public taste. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism, which Poe strongly disliked.

Though this story is not about the supernatural, Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum strikes a more natural horror in the torture of a narrator by the notorious Spanish Inquisition. Focusing more than ever on feelings, sights, and sounds, Poe conveys deep-seated fear like only he could.

This edition of Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and is illustrated with over a dozen pictures of Poe, his residences, his wife, and more.