In his work he brought to life the personalities of a diverse range of characters, and introduced a new immediacy, colloquial energy and psychological complexity to the poetry of his day. This selection brings together verse ranging from early dramatic monologues such as the chilling 'My Last Duchess' and the ribald 'Fra Lippo Lippi', which show his gift for inhabiting the mind of another, to the popular children's poem 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and many lesser known works. All display his innovative techniques of diction, rhythm and symbol, which transformed Victorian poetry and influenced major poets of the twentieth century such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost.

    Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

    Includes "There's a certain slant of light," "Because I could not stop for death," "It was not death for I stood up."

    

    Then the tragic day arrives on which the terrible true nature of the beast is revealed.

    Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

    SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT is one of the most important alliterative poems of Medieval literature

    Compiled by her sister after the poet's death and originally published in 1956, this is the definitive edition of Millay, right up through her last poem, Mine the Harvest.

    One should not be surprised, I suppose, that it has remained vital, and immediate, for that is the nature of story. And this is particularly true of the oral tradition, which exists in a dimension of timelessness. I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seem to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth."The stories in The Way to Rainy Mountain are told in three voices. The first voice is the voice of my father, the ancestral voice, and the voice of the Kiowa oral tradition. The second is the voice of historical commentary. And the third is that of personal reminiscence, my own voice. There is a turning and returning of myth, history, and memoir throughout, a narrative wheel that is as sacred as language itself." —From the new Preface

    Now, for the first time, the works of America's supreme poet of the imagination are collected in one authoritative volume.

    The fairy tale-based works of the tortured confessional poet, whose raw honesty and wit in the face of psychological pain have touched thousands of readers.

    Featuring: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, Michael McClure, and more.

    The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct.

    Technically skillful and spiritually haunting, Poe's body of work poems, tales, a novel, and essays—awakens readers to the darker side of humanity. This Norton Critical Edition includes Poe's most important writing, introduced, annotated, and edited by leading Poe scholar G. R. Thompson."Backgrounds and Contexts" includes fifty-seven judiciously chosen documents that illuminate Poe's short but prolific career, among them Poe's reviews, prefaces, and related correspondence as well as thematic pieces dealing with Transcendentalism and alternative Romanticism, psychological science, sensation fiction, and slavery and the South.Fourteen critical essays address the major themes and genres of Poe's work. Among the contributors are Richard Wilbur, Grace Farrell, Barton Levi St. Armand, J. Gerald Kennedy, and John T. Irwin. A Selected Bibliography and an Index to Works and First Lines of Poems are also included.--back coverTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Edgar A. Poe—An American Life (1809-1849) A Note on Texts and Annotations The Texts of The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe POEMS Introduction Tamerlane Dreams Spirits of the Dead Evening Star Imitation Stanzas: In Youth A Dream The Happiest Day The Lake Sonnet—To Science Al Aaraaf Introduction Fairyland [1] Fairyland [2] Alone To Helen [Stanard] Israfel The Sleeper The Valley of Unrest The City in the Sea The Coliseum Sonnet—Silence Dream-Land The Raven Ulalume—A Ballad The Bells To Helen [Whitman] A Dream Within a Dream For Annie Eldorado Annabel Lee TALES AND SKETCHES Introduction Metzengerstein Loss of Breath [A Decided Loss] MS. Found in a Bottle The Assignation [The Visionary] Lionizing [Some Passages in the Life of a Lion] Shadow Silence Berenice King Pest Ligeia How to Write a Blackwood Article A Predicament [The Scythe of Time] The Man That Was Used Up The Fall of the House of Usher William Wilson The Man in the Crowd The Murders in the Rue Morgue A Descent into the Maelström The Colloquy of Monos and Una Never Bet the Devil Your Head The Oval Portrait [Life in Death] The Masque of the Red Death The Pit and the Pendulum The Tell-Tale Heart The Gold-Bug The Black Cat The Premature Burial The Purloined Letter Some Words with a Mummy The Power of Words The Imp of the Perverse The Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar The Cask of Amontillado Hop-Frog The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym Selections from Eureka Backgrounds and Contexts Edgar Allan Poe—Preface to Tamerlane and Other Poems Edgar Allan Poe—To B__________ (July 1836) Edgar Allan Poe—To Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham (May 4, 1833) Edgar Allan Poe—Preface to Tales of the Folio Club Edgar Allan Poe—To T. W. Hite (April 30, 1835) Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Theodore Fay, Norman Leslie Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Morris Mattson, Paul Ulric J. P. Kennedy—To Edgar Allan Poe (February 9. 1836) Edgar Allan Poe—To J. P. Kennedy (February 11, 1836) J. K. Paulding—To T. W. White (March 3, 1836) Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Drake & Halleck (April 1836) Edgar Allan Poe—To Harrison Hall (September 2, 1836) Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Robert M. Bird, Sheppard Lee (September 1836) Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Baron de la Motte Fouqué, Undine (September 1839) Edgar Allan Poe—To Philip P. Cooke (September 21, 1839) Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Thomas Moore, Alciphron Edgar Allan Poe—Preface to Tales of the Groesque and Arabesque Edgar Allan Poe—Prospectus for Penn Magazine Edgar Allan Poe—To William E. Burton (June 1, 1840) Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Edward Lytton Bulwer, Night and Morning Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Lambert A. Wilmer, Quacks of Helicon Edgar Allan Poe—Excordium to Critical Notices Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ballads and Other Poems Edgar Allan Poe—Two Reviews of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales Edgar Allan Poe—To J. E. Snodgrass (June 4, 1842) Edgar Allan Poe—To James Russell Lowell (July 2, 1844) Edgar Allan Poe—Preface to the Marginalia series James Russell Lowell—Our Contributors . . . Edgar Allan Poe Anonymous [Edgar Allan Poe]—Review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Thomas Hood, Prose and Verse Unsigned Review—Tales of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe—Preface to The Raven and Other Poems Edgar Allan Poe—The Philosophy of Composition Edgar Allan Poe—To P. P. Cooke (August 9, 1846) Edgar Allan Poe—Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse Edgar Allan Poe—The Poetic Principle Edgar Allan Poe—A Reviewer Reviewed George Graham—The Later Edgar Poe Charles Baudelaire—Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works Walt Whitman—[Edgar Poe's Significance] TRANSCENDENTALISM AND ALTERNATIVE ROMANTICISM Introduction Frederic Henry Hedge—On Immanuel Kant and German Transcendentalism Friedrich Schlegel—Fragments from Lyceum, Athenaeum, and Dialogue of Poesie August Wilhelm Schlegel—The Tragic; The Comic Jean Paul Friedrich Richter—Humoristic Subjectivity SCIENCES OF THE MIND Introduction Lavater, Gall, and Spurzheim—From Physiognomical System of Dr. Gall and Spurzheim Orson S. Fowler—From Fowler's Practical Phrenology Thomas C. Upham—From Outlines of Imperfection and Disordered Action POPULAR FICTION: BLACKWOOD'S AND THE SENSATION TALE Introduction Anonymous—Extracts from Gosschen's Diary Anonymous—The Buried Alive William Maginn—The Man in the Bell THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY Introduction James E. Heath—Southern Literature Anonymous—Slavery Edgar Allan Poe—To Beverley Tucker (May 2, 1836) J. V. Ridgely—The Authorship of the Paulding-Drayton Review Edgar Allan Poe—To J. E. Snodgrass (June 17, 1840) Criticism Introduction Floyd Stovall—[Poetry, Imagination, and Cosmos: Poe's Debt to Coleridge] Robert C. McLean—[Poetic Theory and Affective Poetry: Poe and George Tucker] Richard Wilbur—The House of Poe James W. Gargano—The Question of Poe's Narrators Joseph J. Moldenhauer—Murder as a Fine Art: Basic Connections between Poe's Aesthetics, Psychology, and Moral Vision Paul John Eakin—Poe's Sense of an Ending Grace Farrell—The Quest of Arthur Gordon Pym Liahna Klenman Babener—The Shadow's Shadow: The Motif of the Double in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter" Barton Levi St. Armand—The "Mysteries" of Edgar Poe: The Quest for a Monomyth in Gothic Literature Joseph N. Riddel—The "Crypt" of Edgar Allan Poe J. Gerald Kennedy—Phantasms of Death in Poe's Fiction John Carlos Rowe—Poe, Antebellum Slavery, and Modern Criticism Terence Whalen—Average Racism: Poe, Slavery, and the Wages of Literary Nationalism John T. Irwin—Detective Fiction as High Art: Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson on "The Purloined Letter" Selected Bibliography

    A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall's definitive text. Louis P. Masur's introduction sets the work in its historical context. Masur also discusses America after Franklin and why the Autobiography has had such a tremendous impact on nineteenth and twentieth century society and culture. He prompts students to think critically about the text by raising fundamental issues, such as the inherent distortion that occurs in autobiography. Also included in this edition are six portraits of Franklin, questions for consideration, annotations to the text, a chronology, a bibliography, and an index.