Little Masterpieces

In selecting the tales that form this volume, the foremost place has been allotted to two romances of Death, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “ Ligeia.” The latter was considered by Poe himself the finest of all his tales, and in a well-known letter to Lowell he places close beside it ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.” In both his singular genius finds full expression. They are followed by two old-world romances, laid in Rome and Venice, rich in color and subtly varied atmosphere, and vibrating with passion. Of the tales whose theme is the guilty conscience, Poe thought “ William Wilson ”’ and ‘The Black Cat” the best. The briefer one is given here. The “ MS. Found in a Bottle’ is the earliest and in some respects the most purely imaginative of his pseudoscientific stories. The tales of ratiocination— to use Poe’s phrase for what would now be termed detective stories—are represented by:“The Gold-Bug,” a tale less poignant than “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and perhaps less flawless in its art than ‘‘ The Purloined Letter,’ yet one of the most celebrated short stories ever written.