Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque — 1840, volume I

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque — 1840, volume I Local reading text of the 1840 edition, volume I, including its title-page wording and all 17 distinct historical text sections linked from the source table of contents. The two volumes form one research entry and have separate local records. The title page is dated 1840; this is not a claim about the exact day the book was issued. This preserves the specified lifetime-edition readings, distinct from later collected editions already held. It is an electronic historical transcription, not a photographic facsimile. Modern source commentary and double-bracketed correction glosses are excluded; historical author notes are retained. Typography, contents layout and page breaks are simplified. No independent word-by-word proofreading is claimed. CONTENTS Copyright and printing notice Dedication Preface MORELLA LIONIZING WILLIAM WILSON THE MAN THAT WAS USED UP THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER THE DUC DE L’OMELETTE MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE BON-BON SHADOW THE DEVIL IN THE BELFRY LIGEIA KING PEST THE SIGNORA ZENOBIA THE SCYTHE OF TIME TALES OF THE GROTESQUE AND ARABESQUE. —————— BY EDGAR A POE. —————— Seltsamen tochter Jovis Seinem schosskinde Der Phantasie. GOETHE —————— IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. —————————————— PHILADELPHIA: LEA AND BLANCHARD. 1840. Copyright and printing notice ENTERED according to act of Congress, in the year 1839, by EDGAR A. POE, in the clerk's office for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. Printed by Haswell, Barrington, and Haswell. Dedication These Volumes are Inscribed TO COLONEL WILLIAM DRAYTON, OF PHILADELPHIA, WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF RESPECT, GRATITUDE, AND ESTEEM, BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND AND SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. Preface PREFACE. THE epithets “Grotesque” and “Arabesque” will be found to indicate with sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here published. But from the fact that, during a period of some two or three years, I have written five-and-twenty short stories whose general character may be so briefly defined, it cannot be fairly inferred — at all events it is not truly inferred — that I have, for this species of writing, any inordinate, or indeed any peculiar taste or prepossession. I may have written with an eye to this publication in volume form, and may, therefore, have desired to preserve, as far as a certain point, a certain unity of design. This is, indeed, the fact; and it may even happen that, in this manner, I shall never compose anything again. I speak of these things here, because I am led to think it is this prevalence of the “Arabesque” in my serious tales, which has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness, with what they have been pleased to term “Germanism” and gloom. The charge is in bad taste, and the grounds of the accusation have not been sufficiently considered. Let us admit, for the moment, that the “phantasy-pieces” now given are Germanic, or what not. Then Germanism is “the vein” for the time being. To morrow I may be anything but German, as yesterday I was everything else. These many pieces are yet one book. My friends would be quite as wise in taxing an astronomer with too much astronomy, or an ethical author with treating too largely of morals. But the truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognise the distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the secondary names of German literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul, — that I have deduced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and urged it only to its legitimate results. There are one or two of the articles here, (conceived and executed in the purest spirit of extravaganza,) to which I expect no serious attention, and of which I shall speak n