The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition / Table Of Contents And Index Of The Five Volumes

Chapter 128: PREFACE

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About This Book

A five-volume collection gathers short fiction, long narratives, essays, critical writings, and poems arranged with a preface, biographical sketch, notes and an index. It presents gothic and macabre tales that probe madness, doom, and uncanny atmosphere alongside foundational detective and ratiocination stories, adventurous hoaxes, and a sea narrative. The poetry moves between melancholic lyric pieces and highly musical, metrical experiments. Critical essays and reviews offer reflections on aesthetics, literary principles, and practical criticism. Taken together, the volumes map recurring concerns—imagination and terror, analytical deduction, and an ongoing preoccupation with beauty, loss, and musicality in language.

PREFACE

These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random the “rounds of the press.” I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice. With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not-they can not at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of man-kind.

E. A. P.

1845