Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Description

On the 150th anniversary of artist Arthur Rackham's birth, a gorgeous hardcover - the only one in print - of his delightfully spooky illustrated edition of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) was one of the leading illustrators from the golden age of British book illustration. Fairy-tale and fantasy were his forte and in later life he responded to the dark stimulus of Poe's gothic tales with gleeful appreciation of their macabre and otherworldly qualities, claiming afterwards that he had quite succeeded in frightening himself! For lovers of the thrilling and chilling, young and old, Poe's sensational stories cannot fail to hit the spot. This collection contains the best of his prose works, including of course the well-known masterpieces 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (the ultimate haunted house story), 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (the very first detective story in fiction). First published in 1935 it has been redesigned, re-typeset and republished in a handsome edition which features all Rackham's original colour and black and white illustrations. A perfect gift - though not for the faint-hearted!

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, USA, in 1809. Poe, short story writer, editor and critic, he is best known for his macabre tales and as the progenitor of the detective story. He died in 1849, in mysterious circumstances, at the age of forty.