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The Edgar Allan Poe BBC Radio Collection

The Edgar Allan Poe BBC Radio Collection

The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart & other works

Summary

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

About the author

Edgar Allan Poe

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.
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