Gothic literature (1)

Reading lists

A guide to Gothic literature

New Penguin Weird Fiction series of books

Features

Introducing the Penguin Weird Fiction Series

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What to read next

Beautiful horror books from our Clothbound Classics collection

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Semi-colons; or, learning to love literature’s most misunderstood punctuation

Literature's strangest real-life mysteries 

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Literature’s biggest unanswered mysteries

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10 of the best Edgar Allan Poe quotes

The essential Halloween reading list in 10 books 

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8 classic and chilling tales

The Masque of the Red Death

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. 
 
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. 
 
Arguably America's most influential short story writer, Edgar Allan Poe's tales of suspense never fail to spook and amaze. Gathered in this selection are his very best horror stories, including the gothic tour de force 'The Fall of the House of Usher', the other-worldly 'The Masque of the Red Death', and the murderous 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. 
 
'The most original genius that America has produced' Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The most original genius that America has produced

Poe has entered our popular consciousness as no other American writer

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) was born in Boston and orphaned at an early age. Taken in by a couple from Richmond, Virginia, he spent a semester at the University of Virginia but could not afford to stay longer. After joining the Army and matriculating as a cadet, he started his literary career with the anonymous publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems, before working as a literary critic. His life was dotted with scandals, such as purposefully getting himself court-martialled to ensure dismissal from the Army, being discharged from his job at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond after being found drunk by his boss, and secretly marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia (listed twenty-one on the marriage certificate). His work took him to both New York City and Baltimore, where he died at the age of forty, two years after Virginia.

Arguably America's most influential short story writer, Edgar Allan Poe's tales of suspense never fail to spook and amaze. Gathered in this selection are his very best horror stories, including the gothic tour de force 'The Fall of the House of Usher', the other-worldly 'The Masque of the Red Death', and the murderous 'The Tell-Tale Heart'.

16 BBC Radio full-cast dramas

The Rivals: Tales of Sherlock Holmes’ rival detectives

The complete collection of all 16 episodes from this gripping BBC Radio crime series 
 
Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was made to look a fool in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Now he gets his own back, introducing sixteen tales of detectives whose abilities rival that of the great Sherlock Holmes. 
 
Starring James Fleet (Series 1, 3 and 4) and Tim Piggott-Smith (Series 2) as Lestrade, with casts featuring Andrew Scott, Paul Rhys, Anton Lesser, Honeysuckle Weeks, Rupert Vansittart, John Sessions, Marcia Warren and Tim McInnerny. 
 
Dramatised for radio by Chris Harrald, these stories are written by masters of the crime and thriller genre, all contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle. 
 
They include: 
The Murders on the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe 
The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle 
Murder By Proxy by Matthias McDonnel Bodkin 
The Mystery of Redstone Manor by Catherine Louisa Pirkis 
The Problem of the Superfluous Finger by Jacques Futrelle 
The Clue of the Silver Spoons by Robert Barr 
The Intangible Clue by Anna Katharine Green 
The Game Played in the Dark by Ernest Bramah 
The Kinght's Cross Signal Problem by Ernest Bramah 
A Snapshot by Matthias McDonnel Bodkin 
Seven, Seven, Seven - City by Julius Chambers 
The Moabite Cipher - by R Austin Freeman 
The Clairvoyants - by Arthur B Reeve 
The Stanway Cameo Mystery - Arthur Morrison 
The Secret of Dunstan's Tower - Ernest Bramah 
The Mystery of the Scarlet Thread - Jacques Futrelle 
 
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko (Series 1) and Liz Webb (Series 2, 3, 4) 
 
 
(c) BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 2021 
(p) BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 2021

The complete collection of all 16 episodes from this gripping BBC Radio crime series 
 
Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was made to look a fool in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Now he gets his own back, introducing sixteen tales of detectives whose abilities rival that of the great Sherlock Holmes. 
 
Starring James Fleet (Series 1, 3 and 4) and Tim Piggott-Smith (Series 2) as Lestrade, with casts featuring Andrew Scott, Paul Rhys, Anton Lesser, Honeysuckle Weeks, Rupert Vansittart, John Sessions, Marcia Warren and Tim McInnerny. 
 
Dramatised for radio by Chris Harrald, these stories are written by masters of the crime and thriller genre, all contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle. 
 
They include: 
 The Murders on the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe 
The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle 
Murder By Proxy by Matthias McDonnel Bodkin 
The Mystery of Redstone Manor by Catherine Louisa Pirkis 
The Problem of the Superfluous Finger by Jacques Futrelle 
The Clue of the Silver Spoons by Robert Barr 
The Intangible Clue by Anna Katharine Green 
The Game Played in the Dark by Ernest Bramah 
The Kinght's Cross Signal Problem by Ernest Bramah 
A Snapshot by Matthias McDonnel Bodkin 
Seven, Seven, Seven - City by Julius Chambers 
The Moabite Cipher - by R Austin Freeman 
The Clairvoyants - by Arthur B Reeve 
The Stanway Cameo Mystery - Arthur Morrison 
The Secret of Dunstan's Tower - Ernest Bramah 
The Mystery of the Scarlet Thread - Jacques Futrelle 
 
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko (Series 1) and Liz Webb (Series 2, 3, 4) 
 
 
(c) BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 2021 
(p) BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 2021

The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart & other works

The Edgar Allan Poe BBC Radio Collection

Edgar Allan Poe's most celebrated stories, as heard on BBC Radio - plus bonus documentaries and two thrilling original dramas

Edgar Allan Poe's most celebrated stories, as heard on BBC Radio - plus bonus documentaries and two thrilling original dramas 
 
The master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe has inspired generations of horror writers with his chilling Gothic tales, and is also credited with inventing the detective fiction genre in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. 
 
This radio collection features five of his classic tales - The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Oblong Box, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, read by David Horovitch, Brian Gear, James Aubrey, Sean Barrett and Don Gilet. Also included is his renowned poem The Raven, read by Patrick Romer. 
 
Here, too, are adaptations of Poe's suspenseful story of piracy and slavery, The Gold Bug, starring Clarke Peters and Rhashan Stone, and his pioneering mystery story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, starring James Fleet and Andrew Scott. 
 
Radio 3's The Essay: Loving the Raven sees Poe enthusiasts Andrew Taylor, Joanne Harris, Louise Welsh, Mark Lawson and Kim Newman discussing the author's enduring legacy and cult status, while in Adventures in Poetry: The Raven, Peggy Reynolds explores Poe's most iconic work. 
 
Also included are two original dramas featuring Poe himself. Obsessed by a woman's unsolved murder, Edgar Allan Poe is presented with a disturbing revelation on the night before his death in Peter Mackie's The Real Mystery of Marie Roget, starring Ed Bishop. And in Christopher Cook's The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe, starring Kerry Shale and John Moffatt, Poe's famous detective C. Auguste Dupin investigates the bizarre death of his creator. 
 
Content warning: The Gold Bug is set in a time when slavery was still prevalent in America, and contains racist language from that era. 
 
Track listing: 
The Pit and the Pendulum 
The Tell-Tale Heart 
The Oblong Box 
The Fall of the House of Usher 
The Masque of the Red Death 
The Raven 
The Gold Bug 
The Murders in the Rue Morgue 
The Essay: Loving the Raven 
Adventures in Poetry: The Raven 
The Real Mystery of Marie Roget 
The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe 
 
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Edgar Allan Poe's most celebrated stories, as heard on BBC Radio - plus bonus documentaries and two thrilling original dramas 
 
The master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe has inspired generations of horror writers with his chilling Gothic tales, and is also credited with inventing the detective fiction genre in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. 
 
This radio collection features five of his classic tales - The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Oblong Box, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, read by David Horovitch, Brian Gear, James Aubrey, Sean Barrett and Don Gilet. Also included is his renowned poem The Raven, read by Patrick Romer. 
 
Here, too, are adaptations of Poe's suspenseful story of piracy and slavery, The Gold Bug, starring Clarke Peters and Rhashan Stone, and his pioneering mystery story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, starring James Fleet and Andrew Scott. 
 
Radio 3's The Essay: Loving the Raven sees Poe enthusiasts Andrew Taylor, Joanne Harris, Louise Welsh, Mark Lawson and Kim Newman discussing the author's enduring legacy and cult status, while in Adventures in Poetry: The Raven, Peggy Reynolds explores Poe's most iconic work. 
 
Also included are two original dramas featuring Poe himself. Obsessed by a woman's unsolved murder, Edgar Allan Poe is presented with a disturbing revelation on the night before his death in Peter Mackie's The Real Mystery of Marie Roget, starring Ed Bishop. And in Christopher Cook's The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe, starring Kerry Shale and John Moffatt, Poe's famous detective C. Auguste Dupin investigates the bizarre death of his creator. 
 
Content warning: The Gold Bug is set in a time when slavery was still prevalent in America, and contains racist language from that era. 
 
Track listing: 
The Pit and the Pendulum 
The Tell-Tale Heart 
The Oblong Box 
The Fall of the House of Usher 
The Masque of the Red Death 
The Raven 
The Gold Bug 
The Murders in the Rue Morgue 
The Essay: Loving the Raven 
Adventures in Poetry: The Raven 
The Real Mystery of Marie Roget 
The Strange Case of Edgar Allan Poe 
 
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Everyman's Children's Classics has more than 50 titles in print. It offers the finest editions currently available of the world's greatest children's books in handsome, full cloth hardcover bindings. 
 
The library brings back into print major illustrators such as Ivan Bilibin, Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Nicolas Bentley, Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Ardizzone, W.Heath Robinson and Mervyn Peake.

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.

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.

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!

A Modern Detective

He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural.

The Tell-Tale Heart

'Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was a groan of mortal terror ... the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul.' 
 
Stories about murder, mystery and madness, portraying the author's feverish imagination at its creative height. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Poe's works available in Penguin Classics are The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Portable Edgar Allan Poe and The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES 
Spine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. 
 
Edgar Allan Poe was a writer of uncommon talent; in The Murders in the Rue Morgue he created the genre of detective fiction while his genius for finding the strangeness lurking within us all has been an influence on everyone from Freud to Hollywood. This complete collection of all his short stories and novellas contains well-known tales 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart' alongside hidden gems that both unsettle and enthrall the reader.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Selected Stories

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