What one reviewer said about Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe:
Having never written a full novel, Poe is sometimes forgotten when the great fiction writers of American history are listed. The power of Poe's dark vision, though, is virtually unprecedented in world literature. The manifestation of such deep, intuitive symbols and archetypes, ones of such clarity, prophesy and terror that even his incredible craftsmanship in language becomes transparant, is a gift given to only the most blessed and tormented of writers. To read a story like the Masque of the Red Death is to be flung into an allegorical morality play which fits perfectly into the modern context. Poe's stories and poems travel through time and rap ceaselessy on the window of your conscious thoughts. An ominous pall of expectation and retribution permeates all of his work. To pick up Poe is really never to put it down.
The story begins:
IT was a chilly November afternoon. I had just consummated an unusually hearty dinner, of which the dyspeptic _truffe_ formed not the least important item, and was sitting alone in the dining-room, with my feet upon the fender, and at my elbow a small table which I had rolled up to the fire, and upon which were some apologies for dessert, with some miscellaneous bottles of wine, spirit and _liqueur_. In the morning I had been reading Glover's "Leonidas," Wilkie's "Epigoniad," Lamartine's "Pilgrimage," Barlow's "Columbiad," Tuckermann's "Sicily," and Griswold's "Curiosities" ; I am willing to confess, therefore, that I now felt a little stupid. I made effort to arouse myself by aid of frequent Lafitte, and, all failing, I betook myself to a stray newspaper in despair. Having carefully perused the column of "houses to let," and the column of "dogs lost," and then the two columns of "wives and apprentices runaway," I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result. I was about throwing away, in disgust,
"This folio of four pages, happy work Which not even critics criticise,"
when I felt my attention somewhat aroused by the paragraph which follows :
"The avenues to death are numerous and strange. A London paper mentions the decease of a person from a singular cause. He was playing at 'puff the dart,' which is played with a long needle inserted in some worsted, and blown at a target through a tin tube. He placed the needle at the wrong end of the tube, and drawing his breath strongly to puff the dart forward with force, drew the needle into his throat. It entered the lungs, and in a few days killed him."
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