Edgar Allan Poe (1809-­1849) is one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century and among the most important figures in American letters. He perfected the modern short story, and such works of his as “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” are acknowledged as masterpieces of the form. Although his name is synonymous with tales of horror and the macabre, he also wrote satires and literary criticism, and is credited with having written the first modern detective tale. His distinguished poetry includes the classic, “The Raven.”

Mark Summers is an award-winning illustrator whose work appears regularly in The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and Time magazine. Recipient of the prestigious Hamilton King Award, he is also the illustrator of Moby-Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, and A Christmas Carol. He currently lives in Ontario with his wife and daughter.

Neil Gaiman first came to fame as the writer of the Sandman series of graphic novels; since then he’s written such award-winning novels for adults as American Gods and Anansi Boys, and for children, such books as Coraline. He sometimes writes screenplays, picture books, and poems. He’s in his late forties, owns two black leather jackets, and occasionally grows a beard.

For more than a century and a half, Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and tales have thrilled readers with chilling accounts of matters mysterious and macabre. Their somber poetry and rich moods of menace and melancholy have conjured some of the most haunting images in American literature: the accusing echo of the tell-tale heart, the beloved but doomed Annabel Lee, the gloom-shrouded house of Usher, the maddening tortures of the pit and the pendulum, the eerie and enigmatic Raven.

Dramatic and irresistible, Poe’s work invites us to match our darkest imaginings to his vision of a world colored by grief and madness and haunted by specters of guilt and death. This illustrated edition captures Poe’s best-known works in all their shadowy splendor through the incomparable art of Mark Summers. His striking full-page color illustrations and ghostly black-and-white pencil sketches reveal the skull beneath the skin of Poe’s obsessed and mournful characters and subtly express the heart of emotional darkness that gives them life and purpose.

The book also features an introduction by bestselling fantasist and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, who discusses his personal relationship with Poe’s writing and its enduring impact. “Poe,” he writes, “for all his short life and unfulfilled potential, remains as much read today, his finest stories as successful, as readable, as contemporary as anyone could desire.” This new edition of Poe’s unforgettable writing is a colorful and imaginative tribute to this most contemporary of classic writers.