Locked doors, sealed cavities, bricked-up alcoves and premature burial close in on Poe's narrators as they, like their victims, are cut off from light, air and human society. Partly, Poe's stories resonate as the disordered chambers' of the narrators' minds but also they suggest archetypal, if extreme psychological states.

yet Poe was an incurable hoaxer, and in telling some wonderful short stories he also told some excessively tall tales.

The most comprehensive paperback edition available, introduction, selected criticism chronology of Poe's life and times.