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The narrator is invited by a doctor to witness the unwrapping of a mummy at a private residence. After arriving, he and the assembled group of excited men begin opening the sarcophagus and eventually unveil the mummified body, which appears to be surprisingly well-preserved. After some hours of examine the body, they decide to electrify the corpse, only to awaken the ancient personage, who then proceeds to converse with the men at great length about their ignorance and the true history of the Egyptians. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American author, editor, poet, and critic. Most famous for his stories of mystery and horror, he was one of the first American short story writers, and is widely considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre. Many antiquarian books such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. We are republishing "Some Words with a Mummy" now in an affordable, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is one of the most significant and singular writers in the history of American letters. He was a poet, a pioneer of science fiction, the father of the detective story, and a master of the macabre whom Nobel-prize winner Toni Morrison identified as a key to America's conflicted literary conscience. He died mysteriously in Baltimore at the age of forty, leaving behind a body of work that has influenced writers and artists such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Paul Klee, H. P. Lovecraft, Jorge Luis Borges, Stephen King, Tim Burton, Guillermo del Toro, and every crime writer to this day.
