The Pit and the Pendulum: The Essential Poe

For the 200th anniversary of his birth, a collection from the master of heart-stopping horror

Edgar Allan Poe is not only the finest, most terrifying writer of Gothic tales ever to have lived, he also wrote extraordinary poems and, with 'The Murders on the Rue Morgue', invented the detective story, paving the way for Sherlock Holmes.

In this new collection, Poe's genius its full breadth. In 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and other stories of horror - including terrifying classics like 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and 'The Black Cat' - Poe writes of the torments of ingenious, malevolent persecutors and of a mind's own sicking, madness, while in the mournful 'The Raven' and other poems, his writing is beautiful, elegiac and filled with dread.

Selected and introduced by Peter Ackroyd (author of London- The Biography and Poe- A Life Cut Short), with a cover design by the artist Harland Miller (who has previously curated an exhibition of contemporary artists' responses to Poe), The Pit and the Pendulum is a collection of works of a dark and brilliant genius.