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Rating: 
Summary: Good, Basic Annotated Edition Of Poe's Fiction
Review: Poe's brilliant but often arcane writings fairly scream out for an in-depth and lucid annotated text. The huge amount of literary and historical allusions that course through his fiction are of a sort that very few modern readers could possibly fully comprehend. The targets of Poe's frequent satire and parody are pretty much all long forgotten in the great passage of time, rendering some of the tales virtually incomprehensible. One would think that a writer as important and influential as Poe would have numerous annotated editions devoted to his rewarding but difficult fiction. Amazingly, only one such collection is currently in print, this University of Illinois Press volume edited by Stuart and Susan Levine, first published in 1976. In the preface, the stated task is "to bring together in one convenient edition all of the information one needs to understand Poe's stories." The editors attempt to accomplish this by grouping a series of thematically related tales together in fifteen separate sections (with such titles as SLAPSTICK GOTHIC and SALVATION THROUGH TERROR), each with prefatory information and multiple end notes. The notes do provide much needed explanatory detail to the more obscure references and therefore make the stories easier to understand and appreciate. But the editors go no deeper than that, only offering definitions and never once explaining why Poe may have actually decided it was important to use a particular referential aside or Latin phrase. This is basically just a good, functional introduction to the works of this greatest of all "horror writers." Anyone wanting detailed critical and/or interpretative responses to the stories won't find them here.
Rating:
Summary: Good, Basic Annotated Edition Of Poe's Fiction
Review: Poe's brilliant but often arcane writings fairly scream out for an in-depth and lucid annotated text. The huge amount of literary and historical allusions that course through his fiction are of a sort that very few modern readers could possibly fully comprehend. The targets of Poe's frequent satire and parody are pretty much all long forgotten in the great passage of time, rendering some of the tales virtually incomprehensible. One would think that a writer as important and influential as Poe would have numerous annotated editions devoted to his rewarding but difficult fiction. Amazingly, only one such collection is currently in print, this University of Illinois Press volume edited by Stuart and Susan Levine, first published in 1976. In the preface, the stated task is "to bring together in one convenient edition all of the information one needs to understand Poe's stories." The editors attempt to accomplish this by grouping a series of thematically related tales together in fifteen separate sections (with such titles as SLAPSTICK GOTHIC and SALVATION THROUGH TERROR), each with prefatory information and multiple end notes. The notes do provide much needed explanatory detail to the more obscure references and therefore make the stories easier to understand and appreciate. But the editors go no deeper than that, only offering definitions and never once explaining why Poe may have actually decided it was important to use a particular referential aside or Latin phrase. This is basically just a good, functional introduction to the works of this greatest of all "horror writers." Anyone wanting detailed critical and/or interpretative responses to the stories won't find them here.
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