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INTRODUCTIONOf all the many fine authors produced by our country in the nineteenth centurynovelists, poets, essayists, short story writers^Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the least affected by the passage of the years. His thriUing mysteries and fantasies are as fresh as they were when he first wrote them well over a hundred years ago. Of course, not everything he wrote has withstood the passage of time. Some of his tales are, indeed, quite old-fashioned. But none of these has been included in this collection, which contains the best and most enduring of his scores of short stories and sketches.Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. Both his parents, who were traveling actors, died while he was still an infant. Left as a three-year-old orphan in Richmond, Virginia, he was taken into the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Allan. They tried to give him a careful upbringing and a good education. Poe (now with "Allan" as his middle name) was enrolled at the University of Virginia, but at the end of his first year there, when he was eighteen years old, he had amassed so many gambling debts that Mr. Allan refused to pay any more of his "adopted" son's college costs. Poe then quit the university and enlisted in the