Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe - Ultimate Collection - 160+ Short Stories, Novels & Poems (Including Essays & Letters)

Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Tell-tale Heart… (With Biography)

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2017 OK Publishing

ISBN 978-80-272-1907-0

Short Stories Short Stories Table of Contents

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt

The Purloined Letter

The Gold-Bug

Thou Art the Man

The Man of the Crowd

The Tell-Tale Heart

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Cask of Amontillado

The Black Cat

The Masque of the Red Death

The Pit and the Pendulum

Ligeia

The Oval Portrait (Life in Death)

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains

Eleonora

A Dream

Metzengerstein

The Assignation

Berenice

Morella

The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall

William Wilson

The Imp of the Perverse

Hop-Frog (Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs)

The Light-House

Ms. Found in a Bottle

A Descent into the Maelstrom

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

The Balloon-Hoax

Mesmeric Revelation

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

Some Words with a Mummy

Mystification

The Premature Burial

The Oblong Box

The Spectacles

The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether

The Sphinx

The Island of the Fay

The Landscape Garden

Morning on the Wissahiccon

The Domain of Arnheim

Landor’s Cottage

The Duc de l'Omelette

A Tale of Jerusalem

Loss of Breath (A Decided Loss)

Bon-Bon (The Bargain Lost)

Lionizing

King Pest

Four Beasts in One (The Homo-Cameleopard)

How to Write a Blackwood Article

A Predicament (The Scythe of Time)

The Devil in the Belfry

The Man That Was Used Up

The Business Man (Peter Pendulum)

Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling

Never Bet the Devil Your Head

Three Sundays in a Week (A Succession of Sundays)

Diddling (Raising the Wind)

The Angel of the Odd

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

Mellonta Tauta

Von Kempelen and His Discovery

X-ing a Paragrab

The Power of Words

The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion

The Colloquy of Monos and Una

Shadow

Silence

Novels

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The Journal of Julius Rodman

Poetical Works

The Raven

Poems of Later Life

Poems of Manhood

Scenes from Politian

Poems of Youth

Doubtful Poems

Other Poems

Play

Politian

Essays

The Philosophy of Composition

The Rationale of Verse

The Poetic Principle

Old English Poetry

Essays of Criticism

Essays on American Literature

A Few Words on Secret Writing

Maelzel's Chess Player

Eureka: A Prose Poem

Other Essays

Other Works

The Literati of New York

Autography

A Chapter on Autography

A Chapter on Science and Art

Fifty Suggestions

Pinakidia

Omniana

Doings of Gotham

Letters

Memorandum(Autobiographical Essay)

Biography

The Dreamer by Mary Newton Stanard

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture.

— SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Urn-Burial.

The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition. The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract — Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherche movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.

Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.