Presented as ‘A Sequel to ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ was inspired by the murder of a well-known New York beauty, whose body was found in the Hudson River on 28th July 1841. Just like its predecessor, this story – which also features C. Auguste Dupin, the French detective who solved the Rue Morgue case – is one of the earliest examples of the true-crime murder mystery, and is justly regarded as one of the highest points of the entire genre. Alongside ‘Marie Roget’, this volume, which completes Alma’s edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction works, includes a wide variety of tales, spanning from his very early beginnings as a writer, with light-hearted skits such as ‘The Duc de l’Omelette’ and ‘Bon-Bon’, to rollicking adventure stories, fables, dialogues between spirits and parodies such as ‘Mellonta Tauta’ and ‘X-ing a Paragrab’, which he penned only a few months before his premature death in 1849. Taken together, they consolidate Poe’s reputation as one of the greatest and most eclectic storytellers of all time.
