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This volume contains Edgar Allen Poe's 1844 short story, "The Spectacles". A young Napoleon Boneparte alters his name in an attempt to inherit a sizable wealth from a distant relative. He falls in love with a seemingly beautiful woman at the opera, but, being extremely vain, refuses to wear his spectacles... a mistake that he vows never to make again once he realises her true identity. 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 this volume 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.
