The Pit And The Pendulum

This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates an intense interest in aesthetic issues and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind. The Fall of the House of Usher describes the final hours of a family tormented by tragedy and the legacy of the past. In The Tell Tale Heart, a murderer's insane delusions threaten to betray him, while stories such as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Cask of Amontillado explore extreme states of decadence, fear and hate.

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum", a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition faces psychological and physical torture in a dark cell. He struggles to survive deadly traps, including a sharp pendulum and a deep well, using his ingenuity to escape.

It is almost impossible to escape the Spanish Inquisition alive. However, Edgar Allan Poe’s unnamed narrator, after suffering innumerable tortures upon his body and soul in the hands of his tormenters, sees the light of the day at the very end of his sanity’s tether. Even despite the lack of supernatural elements, "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) has enjoyed and influenced several notable movie adaptations. Animations such as The "Flinstones", TV series like "Crime Scene Investigation", to films like Roger Corman’s "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961), starring Vincent Price and some torture methods found in the "Saw" franchise, the story’s famous pendulum scene is a rather fruitful source of inspirations. Yet, despite the terrific torments, the story focuses primarily on how terror is implicitly depicted through the workings of the mind. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American poet, author, and literary critic. Most famous for his poetry, short stories, and tales of the supernatural, mysterious, and macabre, he is also regarded as the inventor of the detective genre and a contributor to the emergence of science fiction, dark romanticism, and weird fiction. His most famous works include "The Raven" (1945), "The Black Cat" (1943), and "The Gold-Bug" (1843).

A new selection for the NEA’s Big Read program A compact selection of Poe’s greatest stories and poems, chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts for their Big Read program. This selection of eleven stories and seven poems contains such famously chilling masterpieces of the storyteller’s art as “The Tell-tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and such unforgettable poems as “The Raven,” “The Bells,” and “Annabel Lee.” Poe is widely credited with pioneering the detective story, represented here by “The Purloined Letter,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Also included is his essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which he lays out his theory of how good writers write, describing how he constructed “The Raven” as an example.

This graphic novel adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale of terror visually explores the dizzying highs and horrifying lows of a prisoner sentenced to death by the Inquisition.

Conor loves to climb. So when the crusty old manager of a thrill ride based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" challenges Conor to scale the ride in the dark of night and hide a package at the top, he foolishly accepts. But it isn't long before he realizes that he is now involved in something far more dangerous. What is in the package, and what does it have to do with Edgar Allan Poe? And why is the town bully so terrified of the old man? The more Conor learns, the deeper in trouble he gets.

One of the greatest of all horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) also composed pioneering tales that seized upon the scientific developments of an era marked by staggering change. In this collection of sixteen stories, he explores 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 reading for anyone wishing to trace the genealogy of science fiction, or to understand the complexity of Poe's own creative vision