As I wrote here earlier (in a couple of posts, one of which was in Finnish) I was reading the collected stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I didn't like his humorous stories in the least (with the exception of "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" which seemed to balance the jokes and the horror quite well), but I'm glad I was able to finish the book. (Um, well, I skipped some stories for being just too damn awful. Another reviewer of the collection wrote in Helsingin Sanomat that the funny stories were delightful... I just cannot comprehend that statement.)
But nevertheless, I made up a small contest on the Fictionmags e-mail list I belong to and simply asked the people on the list to name Poe's best stories. Here are the results. The stories that got only one vote:
The Gold-Bug
Ligeia
Purloined Letter
The Black Cat
Loss of Breath
Ms. Found in a Bottle
William Wilson
The Tell-Tale Heart
King Pest
Two-vote stories:
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
A Cask of Amontillado
Three-vote stories:
The Masque of the Red Death
The Fall of the House of Usher
There were no four-vote stories.
And the winner, with five votes from the members of the Fictionmags list, is Hop-Frog! You can see an old illustration for the story on the left. I don't know the original source. (I'll be posting some other old Poe illos when I'll have the time.)
My favourites would've been "William Wilson" and "Ms. Found in a Bottle", which is quite intriguing and almost absurd.
What are your favourites?
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