Not even Vincent Price could save this for me.  It's official; while I enjoy some of his stories and poems, overall, I am not a fan of Poe.

Let me break down each tale, by telling you which ones I loved and which I did not.
I loved The Tell-Tale Heart. This is a story of how your own conscience can betray you and give you up. I also really enjoyed The Murders In The Rue Morgue. It was an interesting whodunnit with an unexpected outcome.
I did not like The Cask of Amontillado. It was just confusing and I don't get it at all.
I also did not like The Masque of the Red Death. I tell you this, the story made me never want to go to a ball and engage in revelry. Thankfully, I don't see any balls in my future. The rest of the stories were decent. And all-in-all I am glad I read some Poe. Another great classic writer that I can add to my read list!

by Edgar Allen Poe

This story is classic Poe and fairly well known, but I'll try to avoid spoilers anyway. It's about a man who has endured constant insults by a man named Fortunado. The Horror aspect is the coldness within which he plans a premeditated murder out of revenge.

The two men are ostensibly friends and Fortunado is invited to enjoy a special wine, Amontillado, secretly in the dark cellar that serves as both wine cellar and catacomb. What could go wrong?

In a way I was disappointed by the lack of emotion put into the latter part of the story. I knew it from a song written by the Alan Parsons Project by the same title. If you're read the story but not heard the song, I strongly recommend going to YouTube to have a listen. It captured the despair of the victim in a haunting manner that was actually missing from the written story.

There is no supernatural aspect to this particular Poe story. It is pure human cruelty to his own species. If torture and torment are your thing, Poe can always be trusted to deliver.

This was my first time reading Edgar Allan Poe, I know it is a shame. I'd been planning to read some of his works for a while though, ever after I read Ray Bradbury's story Usher II in the collection The Illustrated Man. Luckily, this short collection contained two of the stories that were very important in Usher II.

This is dark fiction as dark fiction is supposed to be. In The Tell-Tale Heart the narrator is desperately trying to prove how he is completely sane, which will only result of course in proving his insanity. Really nice stories, I want to read more.

~Little Black Classics #31~

Classic love poems you read in high school from Barrett-Browning, Browning, Poe, Emerson, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and others beautifully read by Richard Armitage.  I enjoyed hearing the poems read aloud.  I remembered them all from school.