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Extraordinary Tales
de Edgar Allan Poe
Hachette, 1974, 63 p. ; 18 cm. (Facts and Fiction in Easy English)
Death, with the mystery and terror that surround it, is the subject of most of Edgar Allan Poe's tales. "The Masque of the Red Death" is a hideous dance of death; "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" also examines the most terrifying aspects of death. Sometimes the dead come back to life, as in Ligeia and "The Fall of the House of Usher". Often, as in William Wilson, Poe is obsessed with the criminal conscience and its relationship to death. Sometimes a terrifying murder occurs for reasons of revenge, as in "The Cask of Amontillado". Poe also invented the modern detective story : in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue and the Purloined Letter" we meet C. Auguste Dupin, who is the ancestor of all detectives, from Sherlock Holmes to the Inspector Maigret.
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