Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as Free eBooks & Audio Books

in Books, Literature | October 22nd, 2014 1 Comment

With Hal­loween fast approach­ing, let us remind you that few Amer­i­can writ­ers can get you into the exis­ten­tial­ly chill­ing spir­it of this cli­mat­i­cal­ly chill­ing sea­son than Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). And giv­en that he lived and wrote entire­ly in the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, few Amer­i­can writ­ers can do it at so lit­tle finan­cial cost to you, the read­er. Today we’ve col­lect­ed Poe’s freely avail­able, pub­lic domain works of pure psy­cho­log­i­cal unset­tle­ment into five vol­umes of eBooks:

And five vol­umes of audio­books as well (all the bet­ter to work their way into your sub­con­scious):

And if, beyond per­haps read­ing here and there about pits, pen­du­lums, ravens, and casks in Italy, you’ve nev­er plunged into the canon pro­duced by this trou­bled mas­ter of let­ters — Amer­i­can Roman­tic, acknowl­edged adept of the macabre, inven­tor of detec­tive fic­tion, and con­trib­u­tor to the even­tu­al emer­gence of sci­ence fic­tion — your chance has come. If you feel the under­stand­able need for a lighter pre­lim­i­nary intro­duc­tion to Poe’s work, hear Christo­pher Walken (speak­ing of Amer­i­can icons) deliv­er a sur­pris­ing­ly non-exces­sive­ly Walkeni­fied inter­pre­ta­tion of “The Raven” at the top of the post. Below, we have a 1953 ani­ma­tion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” nar­rat­ed by James Mason:

After watch­ing these videos, you’ll sure­ly want to spend Hal­loween time catch­ing up on every­thing else Poe wrote, after which you’ll under­stand that true scari­ness aris­es not from slash­er movies, malev­o­lent pump­kins, or tales of hooks embed­ded in car doors, but from the sort of thing the closed-eyed nar­ra­tor of “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum” means when he says, “It was not that I feared to look upon things hor­ri­ble, but that I grew aghast lest there should be noth­ing to see.”

The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe per­ma­nent­ly reside in our twin col­lec­tions: 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free and 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Down­load a Free, New Hal­loween Sto­ry by Neil Gaiman (and Help Char­i­ties Along the Way)

Watch Goethe’s Haunt­ing Poem, “Der Erlkönig,” Pre­sent­ed in an Art­ful Sand Ani­ma­tion

“A Haunt­ed House” by Vir­ginia Woolf

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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  • Miguel Correa says:
    June 12, 2015 at 10:12 am

    One of the uni­ver­sal mas­ters of the short sto­ry, which was one of the first prac­ti­tion­ers in the coun­try. It was renew­al of the Goth­ic nov­el, remem­bered for his tales of ter­ror. Con­sid­ered the inven­tor of the detec­tive sto­ry, also he con­tributed sev­er­al works to the emerg­ing genre of sci­ence fic­tion. I am grate­ful for this con­tri­bu­tion, thanks

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