Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Calla Editions) Hardcover – September 25, 2008

Even before Dover began this new series of "Calla" hardbacks, I felt their top management deserved an invite to the White House for tea and crumpets and a tasteful award ceremony where they would be honored by The President for advancing the great traditions of the American publishing industry and American Culture in general. And these new Calla books make that mandate for recognition all the more imperative. Not only are these perfectly executed, they are bargain-priced--and actually printed here in the good old USA. Amazing.I first fell in love with Dover about fifteen years ago when a eccentric Bohemian friend of mine recommended their paperbacks for both the subject matter of the titles and book build-quality. Even Dover paperbacks are built for a lifetime, with superior bindings and acid-free paper. But it was the eclectic array of Dover titles which fueled my evolution in all types of fascinating and arcane areas: Egyptology, American Indians, occult studies, arms and armour, castles, railways, primitive art, explorers and adventurers of every sort throughout the centuries from Marco Polo to Captain Richard Burton, fossils, travel, African exploration, lighthouses, tools, engineering, Victorian architecture, world folk lore and mythology--on and on the list goes. I really found a kindred spirit with the Dover catalogue and I must have purchased over 200 of the Dover titles. These books are older classics and I suspect the fact that most of them are out of copyright has helped Dover produce them at a bargain price, but the high-end execution always gives the title the respect it deserves. I will immediately buy a Dover edition over any other publisher for any given book I'm thinking of buying.Then, about a year ago, I was perusing the inventory of Logo's Bookstore in Santa Cruz, California and I noted a spectacular copy of "The Knave of Hearts." This is illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, and some may say it has some of Parrish's best art ever. The quality of this book was truly impressive, and I was staggered to see it was a Dover book, under the "imprint" of "Calla." I had never seen a Dover hardback before. As other reviewers have noted, the paper quality is first-rate, and the prints are probably better than the original first-printing way back when. I bought the book immediately. For some reason I didn't think to search for other Calla titles, but when I received a recent Dover catalogue I noted they had numerous other titles.I just received "Arabian Nights" and "Tales of Mystery and Imagination." These are thicker, heavier books than the "Knave of Hearts." Like Knave, they are cloth-bound books with fabulous illustrations. I have a few versions of "Tales of Mystery and Imagination," and none comes close to this edition. Quite simply, they don't make books like this anymore!! Overall quality is 10/10. As a basis for comparison: I was collecting Folio Society books for several years, and they are likewise astonishing creations. (Until I realized that I had all their titles that I really wanted; and their annual list of new titles was becoming a little staid; and their membership "gifts" were far from compelling.) The build quality on these Calla editions is at least as good as the Folio Society titles, but at one-third the price. (Folio Society does provide protective slip-cover box which is a nice enhancement to the book.) Rest assured, as others have noted, these Calla volumes are stone-cold family heirlooms we're talking about here. Buy them while you can, there's no guarantee these will be around forever.So, old Dover shook things up in my bibliophile scheme of things. It used to be: Dover for paperbacks which I read from cover to cover; Taschen for coffee-table-type collectable books, and Folio Society for a highly rendered edition of the classics. Now, Dover dominates two out of three of these realms.

The artwork in this book makes it a delightful addition to the library of anyone seeking to improve their collection of Poe's writings.

I have been keeping an eye out for this book since I first saw it in my High School Library in the early '60s. What was memorable were the surreal illustrations, and were the best effort I had ever seen in capturing the mood of Poe's stories. This book is a very fine production. It is a black cloth hardback, and the pages are oversized and heavy bond paper slightly yellow off-white color. Most of the illustrations are black and white pen & ink, with a few in color. All of the illustrations are single page, that is the other side of the page is blank; a mark of high quality. This is the definate 'Must Have' edition for anyone interested in Poe's works. I would also rate this book as a 'Best Buy', given the price to quality ratio.Bibliographical Note (Quote)'Tales of Mystery and Imagination', first published by Calla Editions in 2008, is an unabridged republication of the edition originally published by Tudor Publishing Co., New York, in 1933.From the Publisher (Quote)The works of Edgar Allan Poe, in the rarefied company of Thoreau, Hawthorne, Twain, and Melville, represent the full flowering of American literature in the nineteenth century. By itself, this edition would be an outstanding collection of 29 tales of mystery, suspense, and the macabre; but what sets this volume apart are the magnificent illustrations of Harry Clarke. Many artists have attempted to illustrate Poe, though it is no easy feat to match graphically the powerful effect of Poe's words on the reader. Harry Clarke's ambitious attempt is widely regarded as a resounding triumph. While his color-plate work here is excellent, it is Clarke's fine-line full-page Pen & ink drawings that superbly bring to life the intense phychological dramas so central to Poe's storytelling. These richly atmospheric and densely textured creations make this the definitive illustrated edition of an undisputed giant of the American literary canon.

Nice, good quality, wife loves it, but didn't come in the sleeve (as advertised at the time of my purchase). Wife is happy with it so I didn't pursue this further. I also thought the one I saw in a bookstore had gilded pages, but maybe that was a dream within a dream.

In 1936, my father's great-aunt took him to a bookstore on his tenth birthday and told him he could have any book he wanted. He picked "Tales of Mystery and Imagination," and it's lucky his great-aunt was wealthy: five dollars was a lot of money back then.Seventy-five years later, we were still reading from that book, but it had become the worse for wear, so I checked Amazon to see how many hundreds of dollars I'd have to lay out for a replacement. When I saw the low price for the Calla edition, I assumed it must be a cheap knockoff (or have poor illustrations, or some other negative), but the reviews were good, so I took a gamble. Am I glad I did!The print of the Calla edition is every bit as good as that of the 1936 edition, though the pages are not quite as heavy duty (they're still quite good, though). The illustrations in the 1936 edition were printed separately and attached to the pages with glue; in the Calla edition, they are printed on the page. (Still, as another reviewer points out, there's no print on the reverse.) The colors are a little more varied and a bit bolder than in the old edition; maybe Calla worked from originals that had yellowed or faded a bit, as the brighter reds and blues are noticeably weaker, and everything is tilted a bit (in comparison) toward yellow-green. I am pleasantly surprised, however, that the detail in the Calla editions is at least as good and perhaps slightly better. Also, the blacks in the old version are darker.I'd have paid five times the price for this treasure. I'm sure that the modern Calla edition will someday be an heirloom.

bon produit, solide, le tales sont superbes mais pas pour tout le monde..

Great collection of some of the best works from the favourite author. Totally worth it.

5 estrellas

Nel 1976, il ventottenne Alan Parsons, prima di decidere di farsi avanti come autore, era già un’istituzione nel campo della popular music. Negli anni in cui la figura del produttore comincia ad imporre all’attenzione del pubblico il suo ruolo decisivo e determinante non solo riguardo all’aspetto tecnico, ma anche creativo, dei prodotti discografici, Parsons ha già un bagaglio di esperienze invidiabile. Trovato il suo alter ego creativo in Eric Woolfson, musicista dilettante ma con qualche esperienza come compositore legata agli anni del beat, il gioco è fatto: nasce la prima band di non musicisti della storia del rock. The Alan Parsons Project è un collettivo di musicisti scelti in base alle composizioni e con un’orchestra sempre presente, diretta da Andrew Powell.L’idea di esordire con un concept album basato sui racconti di Edgar Allan Poe deve aver spaventato un po’ la critica e creato aspettative che hanno condizionato l’accoglienza dell’album, a dire la verità un po’ freddina. Con il senno di poi, che permette di analizzare le opere in relazione al percorso successivo (e talvolta completo) degli artisti, ci mostra invece un lavoro premonitore, anticipatore di quelle soluzioni musicali che avrebbero fatto la fortuna del Parsons musicista nel decennio successivo. Deve essersene accorto anche lo stesso autore, altrimenti non si spiegherebbe il motivo del ritorno in studio, undici anni più tardi, per remixare tutto l’album ed aggiungere la voce recitante di Orson Welles, curiosamente esclusa dalla prima edizione. Un evidente gesto di considerazione verso un album che, guardato dall’alto, sta esattamente tra i pesanti arrangiamenti orchestrali di Atom Earth Mother dei Pink Floyd e la svolta synth pop.PUBBLICITÀSebbene i moog e i sintetizzatori siano lontani dal ruolo predominante che avranno negli anni a venire, lo stile è già orientato verso la direzione futura. Nell’arpeggio di chitarra dell’iniziale A Dream Within A Dream ci sono già, in embrione, le atmosfere di Sirius, così come nella voce filtrata dal vocoder di The Raven (stando a quanto si dice, la prima canzone pop-rock ad utilizzare questo effetto) si intravvedono già le sperimentazioni “robotiche” di Pyramid e I Robot. La prima parte dell’album è tutta incentrata su un pop-rock tanto leggero ed essenziale nella struttura quanto pesante e barocco negli arrangiamenti, in cui l’orchestra si mescola a strumenti elettronici ed elettroacustici, sfociando, in alcuni casi, in interessanti contrappunti classicheggianti (A Cask Of Amontillado), altre volte in più semplici episodi blues rock (The Tall Tale Heart e il singolo (The System Of) Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether).Completamente diversa la seconda parte del disco: The Fall Of The House Of Usher pesa, nel contesto dell’album, almeno quanto tutti gli altri pezzi messi insieme, e non solo per i suoi 15 minuti di durata. Qui le singole parti della suite, forma tanto in voga nel progressive in quanto riferimento alle strutture ampie della musica “classica”, sono utilizzate in una logica di sviluppo progressivo della tensione attraverso la trasformazione continua dell’organico strumentale. Il preludio è affidato all’orchestra, che rielabora alcuni estratti dell’omonima opera di Debussy basata sul racconto di Poe. La tensione aumenta quando il temporale (II. Arrival) accompagna l’arrivo dell’ospite nella macabra casa e l’ingresso di batteria, basso, chitarre e tastiere, che si proiettano in un prog decisamente pinkfloydiano.Dopo questo crescendo di emozioni intense e spaventose, To One In Paradise segna una dolce distensione, forse eccessivamente stucchevole nell’orchestrazione, ma dolce e incantevole come la fine di un incubo.

Happy with this purchase, the book arrived in perfect condition. Love the black and white illustration and the vintage look of the book. What I was expecting! Thanks!