[Part 1] The selected writings of Edgar Allan Poe -- [Part 1.1] Poems -- Tamerlane -- Dreams -- Spirits of the dead -- Evening star -- Imitation -- Stanzas -- A dream -- The happiest day -- The lake: to ________ -- Sonnet: to science -- Al Aaraaf -- Introduction -- Fairy-land (1) -- Fairy land (2) -- Alone -- Helen -- Israfel -- The sleeper -- The valley of unrest -- The city in the sea -- The coliseum -- Sonnet: silence -- Dream-land -- The raven -- Ulalume: a ballad -- The bells -- To Helen -- A dream within a dream -- For Annie -- Eldorado -- Annabel Lee -- [Part 1.2] Tales and sketches -- Metzengerstein -- Loss of breath -- Ms. Found in a bottle -- The assignation -- Some passages in the life of a lion [Lionizing] -- Shadow: a parable -- Silence: a fable -- Berenice -- King Pest -- Ligeia -- How to write a Blackwood article: a predicament -- The man that was used up -- The fall of the House of Usher -- William Wilson -- The man of the crowd -- The murders in the Rue Morgue -- A descent into the maelström -- The colloquy of Monos and Una -- Never bet the devil your head -- The oval portrait -- The masque of the red death -- The pit and the pendulum -- The tell-tale heart -- The gold-bug -- The black cat -- The premature burial -- The purloined letter -- Some words with a mummy -- The power of words -- The imp of the perverse -- The facts in the case of M. Valdemar -- The cask of Amontillado -- Hop-frog; or, The eight chained ourang-outangs -- [Part 1.3] The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym -- [Part 1.4] From 'Eureka': Essay on the material and spiritual universe -- [Part 2] Backgrounds and contexts -- [Part 2.1] Letters, prefaces, essays, and reviews -- To John Allan (Letter 13, May 29, 1829) -- Letter To B________ -- To Joseph T. and Edwin Buckingham (Letter 37, May 4, 1833) -- The folio club -- To Thomas W. White (Letter 42, April 30, 1835) -- From Theodore S. Fay (review of Norman Leslie) -- From Morris Mattson (review of Paul Ulric) -- John P. Kennedy to Poe (February 9, 1836) -- To John P. Kennedy (Letter 57, February 11, 1836) -- J.K. Paulding to T.W. White (March 3, 1836) -- From Joseph Rodman Drake: Fitz-Greene Halleck (review of the 'The culprit Fay' and 'Alnwick Castle') -- To Harrison Hall (Letter 74, September 2, 1836) -- From Robert M. Bird (review of 'Sheppard Lee') -- From Baron de la Motte Fouqué (review of 'Undine') -- To Philip P. Cooke (Letter 82, September 21, 1839) -- From Thomas Moore (review of 'Alciphron') -- Preface ('Tales of the grotesque and arabesque, ' 1840) -- Prospectus of 'The Penn magazine' -- To William E. Burton (Letter 93, June 1, 1840) -- From Edward Lytton Bulwer (review of 'Night and morning') -- From Lambert A. Wilmer (review of 'The quacks of Helicon') -- Exordium to critical notices -- From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (review of 'Ballads and other poems') -- Nathaniel Hawthorne (review of 'Twice-told tales) April 1842, May 1842 -- To Joseph Evans Snodgrass (Letter 137, June 4, 1842) -- To James R. Lowell (Letter 179, July 2, 1844) -- From 'Marginalia' -- James Russell Lowell: from 'Our contributors': No. XVII. Edgar Allan Poe -- From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (review of 'Poems on slavery') -- From Thomas Hood (review of 'Prose and verse') -- Review of Poe's 'Tales' -- Preface ('The raven and other poems') -- The philosophy of composition -- To Philip P. Cooke (Letter 240, August 9, 1846) -- Nathaniel Hawthorne (review of 'Twice-told tales' and 'Mosses from an old manse') -- From James Russell Lowell (review of 'A fable for the critics) -- From 'The poetic principle' -- A reviewer reviewed / Walter G. Bowen -- From 'The late Edgar Allan Poe' / George R. Graham -- From 'Edgar Allan Poe: his life and his works / Charles Baudelaire -- From 'Edgar Poe's significance' / Walt Whitman -- [Part 2.2] Transcendentalism and alternative romanticism -- On Immanuel Kant and German transcendentalism / Frederic Henry Hedge -- Fragments from 'Lyceum' / Friedrich Schlegel -- Fragments from 'Athenaeum' / Friedrich Schlegel -- From 'Dialogue on poetry / Friedrich Schlegel -- Dramatic lectures: from Lecture III ; from Lecture XI ; from Lecture XVII ; from Lecture XXIII / August Wilhelm Schlegel -- Preschool for aesthetics: from the seventh program, On humoristic poetry / Jean Paul Friedrich Richter -- [Part 2.3] Sciences of the mind -- Physiognomical system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim: from VI. Organ of the propensity to destroy, or of destructiveness / Johann G. Spurzheim -- Fowler's practical phrenology: From 21. Ideality ; Phrenological chart / Orson S. Fowler -- From 'Outlines of imperfection and disordered action / Thomas C. Upham -- [Part 2.4] Popular fiction: Blackwood's and the sensation tale -- Extracts from Gosschen's Diary / Anonymous -- The buried alive / Anonymous -- The man in the bell / William Maginn -- [Part 2.5] The South and slavery -- Southern literature / James E. Heath -- Slavery / Nathaniel Beverley Tucker -- To Beverley Tucker (Letter 62, May 2, 1836) / Poe -- The authorship of the "Paulding-Drayton review" / J.V. Ridgely -- To Joseph Evans Snodgrass (Letter 95, June 17, 1840) / Poe -- [Part 3] Criticism -- From Poe's 'Debt to Coleridge' / Floyd Stovall -- From 'Poetic theory' / Robert Colin Mclean -- From 'The house of Poe' / Richard Wilbur -- The question of Poe's narrators' / James W. Gargano -- From 'Murder as a fine art: basic connections between Poe's aesthetics, psychology, and moral vision / Joseph J. Moldenhauer -- From 'Poe's sense of an ending -- Paul John Eakin -- The quest of Arthur Gordon Pym / Grace Farrell -- The shadow's shadow: the motif of the double in Edgar Allan Poe's "The purloined letter" / Liahna Armstrong -- From 'The "mysteries" of Edgar Poe: the quest for a monomyth in gothic literature / Barton Levi St. Armand -- From 'The "crypt" of Edgar Poe' / Joseph N. Riddel -- From 'Phantasms of death in Poe's fiction / J. Gerald Kennedy -- From 'Antebellum slavery and modern criticism: Edgar Allan Poe's Pym and "The purloined letter"' / John Carlos Rowe -- From 'Average racism: Poe, slavery, and the wages of literary nationalism / Terence Whalen -- Detective fiction as high art: Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson on "The purloined letter" / John T. Irwin.