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The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories

Pages
64
Published
1842
Language
English

Synopsis

This collection brings together some of Edgar Allan Poe's most celebrated tales of terror and suspense. In the title story, 'The Pit and the Pendulum,' a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition endures a nightmare of calculated torments — a lightless pit, a descending razor-edged pendulum, and closing iron walls — in one of literature's most vivid depictions of dread.

The volume gathers further masterpieces of Poe's dark imagination, including studies of guilt, obsession, and the terror of premature burial. Together they range across the many rooms of Poe's Gothic sensibility, from psychological horror to the grotesque and the macabre.

An accessible entry point into Poe's short fiction, this collection distils the atmosphere, cruelty, and morbid brilliance that made him a founding master of horror.

About the author

E
Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in...

Characters

Narrator (Tell-Tale Heart)Supporting
General Lasalle (The Pit and the Pendulum)Supporting
Father TimeCameo
All characters in The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories
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