“Ye who read are still among the living, but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and many secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.” — from Edgar Allan Poe’s “Shadow — a Parable” (1835).

There are many sites on the Internet featuring some of Poe’s works, usually the better known poems (such as “The Raven”) and tales (such as “The Fall of the House of Usher”), and several sites which purport to offer Poe’s “Complete” works — none of these sites, however, can accurately make this boast. At best, they might offer all of Poe’s important poems and/or tales, often without clearly identifying the actual source of their texts. (Most of these sites have taken their material from the “Raven” edition published by Collier & Sons in five volumes in 1903, though this source is rarely acknowledged. Although a good popular edition, those texts do contain errors, and embody editing which does not necessarily reflect Poe’s original texts. Several errors created by the early Griswold edition of Poe’s works find their way uncorrected into the 1903 “Raven” edition, such as the minor but  unwanted “s” on “mortals” in the fifth stanza of “The Raven.” More importantly, many of these texts are offered without the kind of careful proofreading necessary to correct problems with scanning and typing. Many sites use texts containing not only the same version but also the identical typographical errors, indicating that the easy road of copying has widely been taken rather than the difficult path of scanning and proofreading.) Wherever possible, only the original sources have been used for texts on this web site, retaining Poe’s punctuation and spellings, and at least attempting to honor the original formatting as much a practical given the limitations of HTML.

This site is intended not only to cover the well-trodden ground, but to fill in the considerable gaps between what Poe wrote and what is easily available to most readers. Even for the tales and poems, Poe wrote a great deal more than the handful of items read so regularly. Here, one may read Poe’s final tale, the unfinished “The Lighthouse.” One may also find the poem “Deep in Earth” and the fragmentary “The Beloved Physician.” In addition, here are selections from Poe’s essays, literary criticism and such miscellaneous writings as the “Doings of Gotham” letters, the “Marginalia” and Poe’s introductory material for his “Conchologist’s First Book.” It is hoped that by providing free access to a broader selection of Poe’s works, it will quickly become evident that he has been misjudged, based on too narrow a reading of items that reveal but one expression of his genius.