Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque I

From the mysterious marriage in "Morella", to the satirical and secretive vistas of "The Man That Was Used Up", or the depressed Roderick Usher, the reader is faced with the first volume of E. A. Poe's tales. Teeming with melancholy and vampirism, verging on sanity's uttermost rim, Poe's characters often fall victim to supernatural happenings. Men wishing for their wives' deaths, doppelgangers and hollow men, or bargains with the Devil – all these elements reveal the need for Poe's protagonists to discuss, mock, and curse their (ab)normal predicaments. E. A. Poe's immortal heritage in the horror genre is unquestionable and if the reader is not quite familiar with the atmosphere depicted, they could always try Roger Corman's films from the Poe cycle – "House of Usher" (1960), "Pit and the Pendulum" (1961), "The Tomb of Ligeia" (1964) – all starring Vincent Price.