Man"_ (November, 1844, _Godey's Lady's Book_), _The Purloined
Letter_ (1844: _Gift_ for 1845), _The Imp of the Perverse_ (July,
1845, _Graham's Magazine_), _The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether_
(November, 1845, _Graham's Magazine_), _The Facts in the Case of M.
Valdemar_ (December, 1845, _American Whig Review_), _The Cask of
Amontillado_ (November, 1846, _Godey's Lady's Book_), and _Lander's
Cottage_ (June 9, 1849, _Flag of Our Union_). Poe's chief collections
are: _Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque_ (1840), _Tales_ (1845),
and _The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe_ (1850-56). These titles
have been dropped from recent editions of his works, however, and the
stories brought together under the title _Tales_, or under
subdivisions furnished by his editors, such as _Tales of
Ratiocination_, etc.

Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland (1801-1864) wrote of the frontier
life of the Middle West in the mid-nineteenth century. Her principal
collection of short stories is _Western Clearings_ (1845), from which
_The Schoolmaster's Progress_, first published in _The Gift_ for 1845
(out in 1844), is taken. Other stories republished in that collection
are _The Ball at Thram's Huddle_ (April, 1840, _Knickerbocker
Magazine_), _Recollections of the Land-Fever_ (September, 1840,
_Knickerbocker Magazine_), and _The Bee-Tree_ (_The Gift_ for 1842;
out in 1841). Her description of the country schoolmaster, "a puppet
cut out of shingle and jerked by a string," and the local color in
general of this and other stories give her a leading place among the
writers of her period who combined fidelity in delineating frontier
life with sufficient fictional interest to make a pleasing whole of
permanent value.

George William Curtis (1824-1892) gained his chief fame as an
essayist, and probably became best known from the department which he
conducted, from 1853, as _The Editor's Easy Chair_ for _Harper's
Magazine_ for many years. His volume, _Prue and I_ (1856), contains
many fictional elements, and a story from it, _Titbottom's
Spectacles_, which first appeared in Putnam's Monthly for December,
1854, is given in this volume because it is a good humorous short
story rather than because of its author's general eminence in this
field. Other stories of his worth noting are _The Shrouded Portrait_
(in _The Knickerbocker Gallery_, 1855) and _The Millenial Club_
(November, 1858, _Knickerbocker Magazine_).

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) is chief