One of the greatest of all horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) also composed pioneering tales that seized upon the scientific development of an era marked by staggering change. In this collection of sixteen stories, he expires such wide-ranging-contemporary themes as galvanism, time travel, and resurrection of the dead. ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall’ relates a man’s balloon journey to the moon with a combination of scientific precision and astonishing fantasy. Elsewhere, the boundaries between horror and science are elegantly blurred in stories such as ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’, while the great essay ‘Eureka’ outlines Poe’s own interpretation of the universe. Powerfully influential on later authors including Jules Verne, these works are essential readings for anyone wishing to trace the genealogy of science fiction or to understand the complexity of Poe’s own creative vision.

Together with a general introduction, bibliography, and a select chronology of a post-Newtonian science in the century preceding ‘Eureka’, each of the tales in this edition is given an individual critique and extensive notes.

Paperback, 429 pages