Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

Poe's first collection of short fiction, published in two volumes, gathered twenty-five stories he had mostly printed in magazines. The title points to two strains in his writing, the grim and bizarre on one side and the ornate and imaginative on the other. Among its contents are some of his best-known Gothic tales, along with satire and tales of strange adventure. It shows a young writer testing the range of the short story and developing the moods of dread, obsession and mystery that made his name.