The Gold-Bug
William Legrand finds a gold-coloured beetle and a scrap of parchment on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, and follows a pirate's code to buried treasure. Won a $100 newspaper prize in 1843.
Tales
Edgar Allan Poe
Tales
Twelve stories chosen by Poe's publisher, with all three Paris cases of C. Auguste Dupin beside The Gold-Bug, The Black Cat and the House of Usher.
- 1845
- 228
- Atmospheric
- Wry
- Hallucinatory
- plot-driven
- voice-driven
- dark
About Edgar Allan Poe
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeTales is a collection of twelve stories by Edgar Allan Poe, published in New York by Wiley and Putnam in June 1845. The book holds all three of his stories about the Paris detective C. Auguste Dupin: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter. Beside them are The Gold-Bug, The Black Cat and The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe did not choose the stories. The editor Evert A. Duyckinck did, and Poe complained that the choice showed only one side of his writing.
The story, in more detail
Wiley and Putnam issued Tales as part of a series called the Library of American Books. The Poe Society dates the book to about 25 June 1845, from newspaper advertisements. Tales had 228 pages and was sold in tan paper covers for fifty cents. At least 1,500 copies were printed. In November 1845 Poe told Duyckinck that 1,500 had been sold.[1]
Duyckinck picked the twelve stories from about seventy. In August 1846 Poe wrote to his friend Philip Pendleton Cooke that Duyckinck "has what he thinks a taste for ratiocination, and has accordingly made up the book mostly of analytic stories." Ratiocination was Poe's word for step-by-step reasoning. Poe said the choice was "not giving me fair play," because he had written his stories to be as varied as possible.[1]
Duyckinck also left out Ligeia. Poe had called it "undoubtedly the best story I have written" in a letter asking Duyckinck for a second volume of tales.[1] Three of the twelve stories had already been printed in Poe's first collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, in 1840. The Murders in the Rue Morgue had come out as a pamphlet in 1843. The other eight were in a book for the first time.[2][3][4]
Poe kept a copy of Tales and wrote corrections in it. Poe's copy later carried the signature of Rufus Wilmot Griswold, the editor of Poe's collected works after his death, with the note "Poe's Private copy." Scholars now treat Poe's corrections as the best text of several stories. The publisher reissued the unsold sheets in 1849 with a new title page. In 2018 a copy in its original paper covers sold at auction for $315,000.[1][5]
What's inside the original collection
The book opens with The Gold-Bug. On Sullivan's Island, near Charleston in South Carolina, a poor gentleman named William Legrand finds a gold-coloured beetle and a scrap of old parchment. With the help of Jupiter, the freed Black servant who looks after him, he follows the parchment's secret message towards buried pirate treasure. The Black Cat follows, told by a man in a prison cell the night before his execution. Drink has turned him cruel, first to his pet cat and then to his wife.[6]
Mesmeric Revelation is a conversation between a hypnotist and a dying man, Mr. Vankirk, who talks about God and the soul while in a trance. Lionizing is a joke about a man who becomes famous in the city of Fum-Fudge because of his very large nose. The Fall of the House of Usher follows, then A Descent into the Maelström, in which a Norwegian fisherman, aged by his ordeal, describes being sucked into a giant whirlpool and surviving.[6]
Two short dialogues come next. In The Colloquy of Monos and Una, two lovers meet after death and Monos describes dying and lying in the grave. In The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, one spirit tells another how a comet destroyed the Earth. Then come the three Dupin stories, all set in Paris: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter.[6]
The book ends with The Man of the Crowd. A man getting over an illness sits at the window of a London coffee-house, watching the crowd go past. He sees a strange old man and follows him through the streets for a night and a day, and learns nothing about him.[6]
Themes and analysis
Three Paris mysteries
The Murders in the Rue Morgue introduces C. Auguste Dupin, a poor young Parisian who solves crimes by reasoning while the police flounder. His unnamed friend tells the story. Dupin and his friend share an old house in the Faubourg St. Germain and go out only at night. Poe had never been to Paris, and the Rue Morgue is invented.
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt moves a real American crime to Paris. Mary Cecilia Rogers worked in a New York tobacco shop, and her body was found in the Hudson River at Hoboken, New Jersey, in July 1841. In the story she becomes Marie Rogêt, a Paris perfume-shop girl found in the Seine. Dupin works through the newspaper reports one by one. Poe wrote in a footnote that he had followed the real facts in detail.
In The Purloined Letter a government minister has stolen a compromising letter from the royal apartments. The Paris police search his rooms every night for three months and find nothing. Dupin calls on the minister wearing green spectacles, so no one can see where he is looking. He finds the letter in a cheap card rack, in plain view. Poe told the poet James Russell Lowell it was "perhaps the best of my tales of ratiocination."
Puzzles and nightmares side by side
The Gold-Bug made Poe's name widely known. The story won a prize of $100 from a Philadelphia paper, the Dollar Newspaper, in June 1843. The paper had to print a second run, and the story was put on stage in Philadelphia that August. Much of the story is Legrand explaining how he broke the pirate's code. He starts from the fact that e is the most common letter in English.
The Black Cat is the opposite kind of story. Its narrator says he will not try to explain what happened. He blames drink, and what he calls the spirit of perverseness, the urge to do wrong because it is wrong. The story first appeared in a Philadelphia weekly in August 1843, two months after The Gold-Bug.
Duyckinck's choice leans towards reasoning. Five of the twelve stories turn on a puzzle being worked out: the three Dupin stories, The Gold-Bug and A Descent into the Maelström, whose fisherman saves himself by noticing which shapes the whirlpool swallows more slowly. Most of the rest are about death and fear, with one joke, Lionizing, in the middle.
Tales in Paris
Tales soon reached Paris. In October 1846 the critic E. D. Forgues reviewed it in the Paris magazine Revue des Deux Mondes. He pointed out mistakes in Poe's Paris that would surprise a French reader. One example was the Barrière du Roule placed on the bank of the Seine in The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.
Charles Baudelaire's first published translation of Poe was a story from this book, Mesmeric Revelation. The translation appeared as Révélation magnétique in the Paris paper La Liberté de penser on 15 July 1848. His two volumes of Poe's stories, published by Michel Lévy in 1856 and 1857, include eleven of the twelve stories in Tales. The only one missing is The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.
Baudelaire came back to The Man of the Crowd in his essay Le Peintre de la vie moderne, published in 1863. He retold the story of the sick man at the café window who rushes out to follow a stranger. Baudelaire used that man to describe the artist Constantin Guys, whose curiosity about the crowd he saw as the start of his gift.
Quotes from Tales
But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.
Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain.
It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow.
He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd.
Why we recommend it
All of Dupin in one place
The three Paris mysteries that started the detective story are here together, in the text Poe saw through the press.
The book Paris read
A French critic reviewed it in 1846, and Charles Baudelaire translated eleven of its twelve stories.
Puzzles next to nightmares
The code-breaking of The Gold-Bug and the confession of The Black Cat were published two months apart, and they sit next to each other here.
Free to read
The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore publishes the full 1845 text of every story online, with the original page numbers.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- Poe thought Duyckinck chose too many reasoning stories. Having read the book, do you agree?
- Dupin never leaves Paris, yet Poe never went there. Does the city feel real to you?
- The narrators of The Black Cat and The Man of the Crowd both refuse to explain. How do those stories differ from the Dupin stories?
- The Mystery of Marie Rogêt is built on a real death. Is it fair to turn a real woman's murder into a puzzle?
- Which story would you have left out, and which Poe story would you have put in its place?
Inside the book
The Black Cat
A condemned man tells how drink turned him cruel to his cat and then to his wife. He insists he is not mad, and asks nobody to believe him.
Mesmeric Revelation
A hypnotist questions a dying man about God and the soul while he is in a trance. Charles Baudelaire made it his first Poe translation, in 1848.
The Fall of the House of Usher
A visitor comes to the gloomy house of his old school friend Roderick Usher, whose twin sister Madeline is gravely ill. First collected in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840.
A Descent into the Maelström
A Norwegian fisherman whose hair turned white in less than a day describes being dragged into a huge whirlpool off the Lofoten coast, and how he worked out a way to survive it.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Two women are killed in a locked room in Paris, and C. Auguste Dupin works out how. The first Dupin story, from 1841.
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
Dupin reasons through the newspaper reports of a young woman's death in Paris. The case is the real 1841 death of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York, moved to the Seine.
The Purloined Letter
A minister steals a compromising letter, the police search his rooms for months, and Dupin finds it hanging in plain view. Poe thought it perhaps his best reasoning story.
The Man of the Crowd
A man at a London café window follows a strange old stranger through the city for a night and a day. The last story in the book.
Timeline
1841
The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the first Dupin story, appears in Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia.
1843
The Gold-Bug wins a $100 prize from the Dollar Newspaper in June. The Black Cat appears in a Philadelphia weekly in August.
1845
Wiley and Putnam publish Tales in New York, probably on 25 June, at fifty cents in paper covers.
1846
E. D. Forgues reviews Tales in the Paris magazine Revue des Deux Mondes in October.
1848
Charles Baudelaire publishes his first Poe translation, Mesmeric Revelation, in La Liberté de penser on 15 July.
1849
The publisher reissues the remaining copies with a new title page.
1856–1857
Baudelaire's Histoires extraordinaires and Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires, published in Paris by Michel Lévy, include eleven of the twelve stories.
2018
A copy in its original paper covers sells at auction on 18 November for $315,000.
Book editions
- Hardcover
- Library of America
- 1984
- 9780940450189
Paperback
- Paperback
- Wiley and Putnam
- 1845
- Paperback
- Modern Library
- 2006
- 9780679643425
Paperback
- Paperback
- Michel Lévy
- 1856
- Charles Baudelaire
Paperback
- Paperback
- Michel Lévy frères
- 1857
- Charles Baudelaire
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The first Dupin story, on its own page, with the history of its 1843 pamphlet and its arrival in Paris.
Read our take
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
Poe's first story collection, from 1840. Three of its stories, including The Fall of the House of Usher, were printed again in Tales.
Read our take
The Raven and Other Poems
Poe's poems, published by Wiley and Putnam later in the same year. Some copies of the two books were bound together.
Read our take
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Poe's only novel, a sea story that shares A Descent into the Maelström's interest in surviving the ocean at its worst.
Read our takeTales: frequently asked questions
What stories are in Tales (1845)?
Twelve. The first six are The Gold-Bug, The Black Cat, Mesmeric Revelation, Lionizing, The Fall of the House of Usher and A Descent into the Maelström. The other six are The Colloquy of Monos and Una, The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, The Purloined Letter and The Man of the Crowd.
Who chose the stories in Tales?
Evert A. Duyckinck, an editor working for the publishers Wiley and Putnam. He picked twelve from about seventy. Poe wrote in 1846 that the choice leaned too far towards reasoning stories and was "not giving me fair play."
Is The Tell-Tale Heart in Tales?
No. The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado and Ligeia are not among the twelve. Modern books called Tales often have quite different contents.
Is Tales the same book as Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque?
No. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is Poe's first collection, from 1840, with twenty-five stories. Tales came out in 1845 with twelve. Three stories appear in both: Lionizing, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion.
What is the connection between Tales and Paris?
Three of its stories are the Dupin mysteries, all set in Paris, though Poe never went there. A Paris critic reviewed the book in 1846. Charles Baudelaire later translated eleven of its twelve stories.
How much is a first edition of Tales worth?
A copy in its original paper covers sold at auction in November 2018 for $315,000. Many copies survive, but copies still in their original paper covers are rare.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Tales, its publication, and its place in literary history.
2↑Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Volume I (1840 title-page date)
ArchiveLea & Blanchard; transcription by the Poe Society, 1840Used forContents of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Volume I, for the stories printed in both books.
3↑Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Volume II (1840 title-page date)
ArchiveLea & Blanchard; transcription by the Poe Society, 1840Used forContents of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Volume II.
4↑The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe (1843): First-Edition Bibliography
ArchiveEdgar Allan Poe Society of BaltimoreUsed forThe 1843 pamphlet printing of The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
5↑The Purloined Letter — editorial notes to The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. III: Tales and Sketches
WebsiteThe Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 1978Used forMabbott's notes: first printing, Poe's letter to Lowell, and Poe's corrected copy of Tales as the best text.
7The Murders in the Rue Morgue — editorial notes to The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. II: Tales and Sketches
WebsiteThe Edgar Allan Poe Society of BaltimoreUsed forMabbott on the invented Paris of the Dupin stories and Forgues's 1846 review of Tales.
8The Mystery of Marie Rogêt — editorial notes to The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. III: Tales and Sketches
WebsiteThe Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 1978Used forMabbott on Mary Cecilia Rogers and on Forgues's objection to Poe's Paris geography.
9The Black Cat — editorial notes to The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. III: Tales and Sketches
WebsiteThe Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 1978Used forMabbott's notes: first printing in the United States Saturday Post, August 1843.
10Mesmeric Revelation — editorial notes to The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. III: Tales and Sketches
WebsiteThe Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 1978Used forMabbott on Baudelaire's translation of the story in July 1848.
11Edgar Allan Poe — A Chronology
WebsiteThe Edgar Allan Poe Society of BaltimoreUsed forThe Gold-Bug's prize and stage version in 1843.
12Histoires extraordinaires, par Edgar Poe, trans. Charles Baudelaire, Paris: Michel Lévy, 1856 — catalogue record with contents
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forContents of Baudelaire's first volume of Poe's tales.
13Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires, par Edgar Poe, trans. Charles Baudelaire, Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1857 — catalogue record with contents
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forContents of Baudelaire's second volume of Poe's tales.
14Le Peintre de la vie moderne, III: L'artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et enfant (text from L'Art romantique)
EssaysWikisource, 1863Used forBaudelaire's retelling of The Man of the Crowd.
15Le Peintre de la vie moderne (The Painter of Modern Life)
EssaysLe Figaro, Paris, 1863Used forThe essay's first publication in 1863.
16Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry & Tales
WebsiteLibrary of America, 1984Used forLibrary of America's description of the Poetry & Tales volume.
17Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry & Tales (Library of America No. 19): Edition Details
WebsiteMIT Press BookstoreUsed forISBN, date and length of the Library of America volume.
18The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales (Modern Library, 2006), introduction by Matthew Pearl
WebsitePenguin Random HouseUsed forThe Modern Library edition of the three Dupin stories.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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