The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection

By: Edgar Allan Poe

Narrated by: Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone

Universally acclaimed as the maestro of horror and the morbid, Edgar Allan Poe's dark gift has for more than a century and a half set the standard for the genre. Here, 20 of Poe's most chilling stories and poems are performed by two of his most brilliant interpreters: Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone. Included are The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, Bells, The Gold Bug, and many more!©2000 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., All Rights Reserved. (P)2000 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., All Rights Reserved.

Critic reviews

2000 Winner of Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award: Archival Reissue

"Superb renderings...[Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone] know this material well...and know how to make it chill the listener. It's a romp for them and a delight for us." (AudioFile)

Lacking

Doesn't have a table of contents or chapter titles so it just goes straight into poems without any idea what's playing. The sound quality is quite low so I have to crank it loud to hear.
Dissapointed because the price point is a bit high for the quality.
Amazon is just lucky their voices are worth it.

Damn, but the voices are creepy!

Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone are amazingly creepy! Mindblowingly disturbing voices combined with Poe's disturbing text and you have something to send chills up & down your spine. Perfect for Halloween.

Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone are excellent

This was great, I love Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone. I'm keeping this one on my device so I can listen to it again.

So Good!!

The reading of these poems and short stories were amazing! the only thing that could make it better is a separation of each one as well as a title.

love the classics

Where does The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

right up there

What did you like best about this story?

I love a good classic, often off colored like Poe. It's nice for me to get lost in an afternoon with something different.

What about Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone ’s performance did you like?

Vincent Price brings the story to life. His voice makes the whole experience.

Superb Narrations, but WHY NO TITLES?!

Such a classic author paired with pre-eminent actors in the macabre should rate perfection, but for some vexing reason unknown to me, none of the titles of the stories or poems are read before the tales themselves.

Love it

Both are great readers for the works of Poe, wish they would tell title of each story at the beginning

Utterly Unusable Formatting

As mentioned others--Price and Rathbone provide a masterful performance; however, the formatting is grossly unusable, especially to those not already intimately familiar with the works of Poe. I have little to add by way of content review...Poe's masterful. Copyright 2000 by Harper Collins Publishers, this performance is so poor that it makes you wonder how it could have lasted for 14 years and stupid people like me keep buying it.

Excellent performance, poor formatting.

As mentioned by other reviewers: a. Price and Rathbone provide a masterful performance here, and b. the formatting is bad enough to render the recording almost unusable, especially to those not already intimately familiar with the works of Poe. I have little to add by way of review, but I took the time to create a table of contents that I hope will be of assistance to other listeners.

1.) 0:10 - 2:03 To -----
2.) 2:03 - 3:10 Alone
3.) 3:15 - 6:23 The City in the Sea
4.) 6:28 - 31:20 Berenice
5.) 31:25 - 55:28 The Fall of the House of Usher *
6.) 55:30 - 1:44:27 Ligeia
7.) 1:44:30 - 1:46:49 excerpt from The Fall of the House of Usher
8.) 1:46:55 - 2:18:43 The Pit and the Pendulum
9.) 2:18:46 - 2:35:27 The Masque of the Red Death
10.) 2:35:33 - 2:49:37 The Tell-Tale Heart
11.) 2:49:40 - 3:45:27 The Gold Bug
12.) 3:45:30 - 4:12:19 The Black Cat
13.) 4:12:25 - 4:20:58 The Raven
14.) 4:21:03 - 4:38:00 The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
15.) 4:38:01 - 4:54:07 The Cask of Amontillado
16.) 4:54:13 - 4:58:23 The Bells
17.) 4:58:28 - 5:00:35 Annabel Lee
18.) 5:00:40 - 5:01:19 Eldorado
19.) 5:01:25 - 5:16:00 The Imp of the Perverse
20.) 5:16:06 - 5:31:22 Morella

*Selection #5, "The Fall of the House of Usher" skips a section of verse (marked as I-VI in the text), along with approximately one page on either side of this section. The skip occurs at 40:57. Selection #7 is of the missing verse (I-VI), though without the other material excluded from #5. Selection #5 has additional abridgments - a paragraph here, a sentence or a word there. I have not found any further abridgments in the other selections; if you find any, please post the information in a review.

ok

Classic narration for sure. Unfortunately the audio needs to be cleaned up, and edited so the listener can skip from story to story. As it is, one must fast-forward to move past a poem or story.