In The Shadow Of The Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

illustrating the Edgar Allan Poe collection Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Clarke used the techniques he learned from working in stained glass on his macabre illustrations of Poe’s dark stories. The resulting work, Poe’s dark vision brought to stunning life by Clarke’s detailed imagery, created a sensation when the first edition was published in October 1919. Other books that Clarke illustrated include The Years at the Spring, Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault, Goethe's Faust, and Selected Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne. He also created more than 130 stained-glass windows, one of which, “The Baptism of St. Patrick,” was selected for exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.

Unfortunately, the unceasing, grueling pace of his work, perhaps along with the toxic chemicals used in the stained-glass process, cut his life short. In 1931, at the age of forty-one, Harry Clarke died in Switzerland while trying to recover from tuberculosis.

What Poe Hath Wrought BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

Happy birthday, Edgar Allan Poe. Seems strange using that name and that word “happy” in the same sentence. A tragic and morose figure in his short life, Poe is celebrated today, two hundred years after his birth, as the mad genius who started it all rolling in the genre of mystery fiction. His influence in other genres and fields of entertainment-from poetry to music to film-is incalculable. To put it simply, Edgar Allan Poe’s work has echoed loudly across two centuries and will undoubtedly echo for at least two more. He walked across a field of pristine grass, not a single blade broken. Today that path has been worn down to a deep trench that crosses the imagination of the whole world. If you look at best-seller lists, movie charts, and television ratings, they are simply dominated by the mystery genre and its many offshoots. The tendrils of imagination behind these contemporary works can be traced all the way back to Poe.

This collection is presented to you by the Mystery Writers of America. Since day one this organization has held Edgar Allan Poe as its symbol of excellence. The annual award bestowed by the MWA on the authors of books, television shows, and films of merit is a bust of Edgar Allan Poe. It is a caricature, and what is most notable about it is that the figure’s head is oversized to the point of being as wide as his shoulders. Having the honor of guest- editing this collection of stories and essays, I now realize why Edgar’s head is so big.

I’m not going to get analytical about Poe’s life or work here. I leave that to his disciples. Gathered here with his most notable works are the long and short thoughts of those who follow Poe-the writers who directly or not so directly have taken inspiration from him. These are Edgar winners, best-selling authors, and practitioners of the short story. From Stephen King, who writes so eloquently of his connection to Poe, to Sue Grafton, who lovingly, grudgingly, gives Poe his due, to the late Edward Hoch, who penned over nine hundred seventy-five short stories, these writers are the modern masters of the world Poe created. The idea here is simple. This is a birthday party. The twenty guests invited here by the Mystery Writers of America have come to honor Edgar Allan Poe on his two hundredth birthday. We celebrate his work, and we celebrate all that his work has wrought.

I wonder what Poe would think of this. My guess is that it would give him a big head.

A Descent into the Maelstrom

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.

– JOSEPH GLANVILL

WE HAD NOW REACHED the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak. “Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man-or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of-and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man-but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?”

The “little cliff,” upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge-this “little cliff” arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to be within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky-while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.

“You must get over these fancies,” said the guide, “for I have brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that event I mentioned-and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your eye.”

“We are now,” he continued, in that particularizing manner which distinguished him-“we are now close upon the Norwegian coast-in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude-in the great province of Nordland-and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher-hold on to the grass if you feel giddy-so-and look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea.”

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer’s account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.

The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction-as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.

“The island in the distance,” resumed the old man, “is called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off-between Moskoe and Vurrgh-are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the places-but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear any thing? Do you see any change in the water?”

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old