American Authors

THE RAVEN POEM by Edgar Allan Poe Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping […]

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Impromptu. To Kate Carol Poem by Edgar Allan Poe When from your gems of thought I turn To those pure orbs, your heart to learn, I scarce know which to prize most high — The bright i-dea, or the bright dear-eye. -The End- Kate Carol was a pseudonym of Frances Sargent Osgood.

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Marginalia by Edgar Allan Poe Marginalia (or apostils) are marks made in the margins of a book or other document. They may be scribbles, comments, glosses (annotations), critiques, doodles, or illuminations. DEMOCRATIC REVIEW, November, 1844 In getting my books, I have been always solicitous of an ample margin; this not so much through any love […]

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The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. by Edgar Allan Poe LITERARY LIFE OF THINGUM BOB, ESQ. by Edgar Allan Poe LATE EDITOR OF THE “GOOSETHERUMFOODLE” BY HIMSELF (1850) I am now growing in years, and—since I understand that Shakespeare and Mr. Emmons are deceased—it is not impossible that I may even die. It has […]

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DREAMLAND POEM by Edgar Allan Poe By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named Night, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of Space—out of Time. Bottomless vales […]

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THOU ART THE MAN by Edgar Allan Poe I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will expound to you—as I alone can—the secret of the enginery that effected the Rattleborough miracle—the one, the true, the admitted, the undisputed, the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to infidelity among the Rattleburghers […]

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THE SYSTEM OF DOCTOR TARR AND PROFESSOR FETHER by Edgar Allan Poe DURING the autumn of 18—, while on a tour through the extreme southern provinces of France, my route led me within a few miles of a certain Maison de Sante or private mad-house, about which I had heard much in Paris from my […]

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THE ANGEL OF THE ODD by Edgar Allan Poe AN EXTRAVAGANZA. 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 […]

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THE OBLONG BOX by Edgar Allan Poe SOME years ago, I engaged passage from Charleston, S. C, to the city of New York, in the fine packet-ship “Independence,” Captain Hardy. We were to sail on the fifteenth of the month (June), weather permitting; and on the fourteenth, I went on board to arrange some matters […]

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THE SPECTACLES by Edgar Allan Poe MANY years ago, it was the fashion to ridicule the idea of “love at first sight;” but those who think, not less than those who feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. Modern discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or magnetoesthetics, render it probable that the […]

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THE PURLOINED LETTER by Edgar Allan Poe Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. Seneca. At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18-, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisiême, No. […]

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MESMERIC REVELATION by Edgar Allan Poe WHATEVER doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession—an unprofitable and disreputable tribe. There can be no more absolute waste of time than the attempt to prove, at the […]

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