This Top Five Classics illustrated edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven includes:
• All 25 illustrations by Gustave Doré from the 1884 Harper & Brothers edition
• A informative introduction
• A detailed biography of Edgar Allan Poe
• An illustrated version and a text-only version of the poem
No poem has ever received the kind of immediate and overwhelming response that Poe’s “The Raven” did when it was first published in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. It made Poe a household name overnight (though his great fame never brought much wealth), and the poem, a powerfully haunting elegy to lost love remains to this day one of the most beloved and recognizable works in the English language.
The illustrations that accompany this Top Five Classics edition were created by renowned French artist Gustave Doré for Harper & Brothers’ 1884 release of The Raven. Doré completed his steel-plate engravings just before passing away in January 1883. His posthumously published illustrations became famous in their own right, evoking as they do the lyrical and mystical air of Poe’s masterpiece.
