The Man of the Crowd

*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.

The Man of the Crowd is not one of Poe's best known stories, but it's definitely unique. A nameless narrator follows a man throughout London over the course of a day and a night, for seemingly no purpose, and it's unclear what his obsession with the man is. The story has led some to analyze it in different ways, leaving it for the reader to try to determine for himself or herself. 

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