Often longwinded introductory sentences, even paragraphs, before the story begins, Poe's style is one to get into. This amazing collection of stories offers just that. I love the way Poe uses the most up to date science to account his readers with. Mainly the discovery of Neptune, also Mesmerisation (very popular at the time), and throughout suggesting his own hypotheses (the formation of the universe, the afterlife, etc). An entertaining book even if sometimes the story cuts short, or a character vanishes (what happened to Tiger?). This edition has B&W illustrations by Arthur Rackham, Harry Clarke, Vogel & Sterner (and others). Below a short synopsis to remind myself of each story:

16 stories:
MS Found in a Bottle
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
The Island of the Fay
The Colloquy of Monos and Una
Astounding News! (The Balloon-Hoax)
A Tale of the Rugged Mountains
Mesmeric Revelation
The Power of Words
The Facts of Mr. Valdemar's Case
Some Words With a Mummy
A Prediction
Mellonta Tauta
Von Kempelen and His Discovery
The Unparalleled Adventures of Hans Phall
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Eureka A Prose Poem (Excerpts)
also contained a report on Poe's lecture "The Universe".

(1) A passenger on a shipwrecked ship is saved by another ship filled with old men (possibly ghosts) who await their own destruction at Antarctica.
(2) very short work (five-pages long!) in which two angels discuss the divine implications of our ability to mathematically determine the future consequences of an action, especially wave propagation. Like Lagrange in his famous discussion of the determinism of Newtonian physics, these angels explain the role of mathematical predictability in the creation of the universe: God had worked out mathematically precisely what vibration (created by his voice) would lead to the creation of the universe as we know it. In addition to this suggestion that God needed "algebraic analysis" to create the universe, mathematicians might be interested in the logical paradox that apparently keeps God happy. According to the angels, God could not know everything and be happy. So, to solve this problem, he only knows almost everything. In particular, he knows everything except whether he knows everything
(3) Poe created a narrative possibly having regarded a mezzotint by John Sartain, and imagined a descriptive, contemplative monologue of am imagining of supernatural "fairy-like" beings from the surrounding view. "...the stars move...without collision". He describes a brief observational encounter with one of the "Fays".
(4) A dialogue of spirits, reflecting Poe's rejection of the idea of progress and "improvement" of humankind's industrial growth. "The fair face of nature was deformed". The two spirits are remembering past events, and the "now" seems to be the death of one, who finds itself still sentient "without being awakened". The story describes the physical death and afterlife and thoughts and feelings of one as they await being reunited by the other to join in the afterlife.
(5) Published as a newspaper article in 1844, the story of eight people crossing the Atlantic in a Balloon propelled using an Archimedean screw. The adventurers were aiming to go to Paris from England, but instead took advantage of the wind to go to America instead. The balloon reached a height of 50, 000 feet (about the height of Cotopaxi). "I felt neither very intense cold, nor headache, nor difficulty of breathing" and the sea seems "unequivocally concave".
(6) The story of a habitual morphine user who encountered a strange man with an instrument "composed of an assemblage of steel rings"(tambourine?), being chased by a hyena. He found himself overlooking a strange city like from "Arabian Tales", and the story goes on. Turns out the story he told his friends was an accurate description of real events that had already happened in India.
(7) Poe's story of how mesmerising someone puts them in a state close to death. The story follows a conversation between a mesmerised dying man and his friend who believes his consciousness reached the afterlife during the conversation.
(8) A Dialogue between spirits concerning creation, knowledge, and the physical power of words.
(9) Another story about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death "...now - I am dead.". Seven months later, still in the hypnotic state, the dead man repeated "I say to you I am dead!". Upon awakening him from his state, his body disintegrated before their eyes.
(10) This has to be one of the most humourous stories in the the collection. An Egyptian mummy (named Allamistakeo) comes to life and holds conversation with some historians (who speak ancient Egyptian). They discuss the burial embalming procedures of his "Scarabaeus" tribe (who fortunately do not remove the organs), the usual life-span of about one thousand years, how there is only one god, that the universe was not created, but had always existed, and that his civilization is superior. Ultimately the mummy decides to get himself embalmed again so he can wake up in a different time.
(11) Very short idea that the planets revolving around the sun will eventually absorb all the sun's heat which will cause them to melt. ~In the text, Poe mentions Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis, Kepler's Third Law , the origins of satellites, and Neptune.
(12) A collection of letters written by a woman during a balloon flight in 2848. Describes a future society the cares for the mass, not the individual (civil war and plague doing good as a positive advantage to the mass). Discusses the ridiculous old philosophies of Aries Tottle, Neuclid, Cant, Hogg Ettrick Shepherd. Talks about gravity and the solar system. Ends with a funny misinterpretation of an inscription on the memorial stone from a Washington Monument.
(13) Story of a counterfeiter who found out how to make gold using lead. The price of lead increased.
(14)Hans Phall, a Dutchman disgruntled by his monotonous work and underachieving life takes off in a balloon on a journey to the moon with two pigeons and a cat. Written in the form of a diary, with long descriptions of his balloon, his equipment, and the earth seen from the air. Mentions of Encke's comet, Zodiacal light, Campi Phlegraei, Johann Hieronymus Schröter, and Sidereal revolution. He lands on the moon and meets earless people. The Story cuts short indicating more will be said. All we know is Hans Phall made it back to home in a balloon.
(15) The Story of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who is smuggled aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus by his friend Augustus (whom he had envied his adventures in the South Pacific Ocean, and had previously experienced a rescue together whilst rowing intoxicated late at night). Whilst hiding below deck, the ship suffers a mutiny, he is reunited with his family pet Newfoundland "Tiger", and the story goes on. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, cannibalism, drawing straws for survival, diving for supplied inside the stricken vessel, storms, and a plague ship. One of the most descriptive parts of the narrative are when they land at Desolation Island in the Indian Ocean, where penguins and Albatross live side by side, in the captain's search for the illusive Aurora Islands. Hieroglyphs are found inside a series of tunnels, whilst hiding from the undiscovered civilisation "Tekeli-li" people (an idea borrowed by H. P. Lovecraft, whose 1936 novel At the Mountains of Madness follows similar thematic direction and borrows the cry tekeli-li or takkeli); but ultimately the story ends abruptly, amongst chasms that open throughout the sea in the final moments of the book (deriving from the Hollow Earth theory). This story was an influence for both Herman Melville and Jules Verne.
(14) Adapted from a lecture, this is a non-fiction piece about Poe's conception of the nature of the universe, man's relationship with God, transcendentalism, cryptography, the speed of the stars, the diameters of planets and distances among them, the weight of Earth, and the orbit of the newly discovered planet, Neptune. ( )