The Edgar Allan Poe Collection I

By: Edgar Allan Poe

Narrated by: David Ian Davies

One Voice Recordings presents amazingly versatile voice actor David Ian Davies performing three of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous short stories.

Oblong Box is Poe's shipboard tale of a pleasure cruise to New York that progresses from odd to horribly grotesque.

In The Pit and the Pendulum, the infamous trials and inhuman violence of the French Inquisition are the inspiration for Poe's narrative of one man's waking nightmare as he finds himself being driven mad in a torture chamber by one horrific confrontation with hideous immolation after another.

The Black Cat is Poe's renowned and blood curdling story of one man's descent into madness, focused on his steadily growing and inexplicable hatred of a once beloved black feline. This tale is highly disturbing and not for the squeamish.

©2005 One Voice Recordings, All Rights Reserved

It's Poe

There’s something about Edgar Allan Poe. He had a gift for the macabre, but also a knack for putting a story together in a way that reveals its secrets slowly and pulls you in, while also exploring the psychology of guilt. This is an audiobook that puts together 3 or Poe’s most famous short stories, “Oblong Box,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum. The “Oblong Box” is just a bit of a strange story of a passenger on a ship that is not quite what he seemed. “The Black Cat” is a tale of a man’s descent into some sort of psychotic madness that changes him so that he becomes cruel and murderous, but who thinks he will get away with it until “betrayed” by a black cat and possibly his own madness. “The Pit and the Pendulum” is probably the most famous of the three, set during the French Inquisition with a man facing slow psychological torture. Of course, Poe’s stories are good, but they could have had a better reader. I would expect that Poe would be the ideal kind of book for an audiobook because the right reader can add so much to the atmosphere behind the story, as I saw last year when I listened to a reading of “The Raven.” This reader was not bad, but just didn’t light that spark. Still, it’s Poe and if you like Poe, you’ll like this short collection. 

You cant go wrong

Its edgar allen poe. You cant go wrong. Wasnt crazy about the narrator but it wasnt unreadable by any means

I would have liked a different accent better

These stories are classics, but I wasn't crazy about the reader's ultra-plummy Shakespearean accent. My husband wasn't bothered by it.

Low Recording Quality

The audio has low quality and awkward pauses. This is distracting. The voice and stories were good though.

unfortunate experience

fortunately for me i had already read edgar allan poe's book, for this particular audiobook doesn't do justice to the author.

Disappointed

I don't think the reader does the author credit.
Rushed.
Just words.
not so good.