The Gold-Bug Audiobook By Edgar Allan Poe cover art

The Gold-Bug

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The Gold-Bug

By: Edgar Allan Poe
Narrated by: Chris Lutkin
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About this listen

The grand-prize winner of a writing contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, "The Gold-Bug" was one of Poe's most popular stories during his lifetime. Similar to his ratiocination tales - early versions of what we now call detective fiction - "The Gold-Bug" is full of mystery and adventure and includes a cryptogram, invisible ink, a scarab-like bug, and pirate treasure.

Public Domain (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Classics Fiction Mystery Short Story
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What listeners say about The Gold-Bug

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Poe

what an imagination ! I want to write with cryptography now. A lot of detail and some prejudices from a hundred years ago are relevant, if you can look past that it's a great short story

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Poe never disappoints.

Quick gothic mystery. It’s a shame this story is often overlooked due to dated language. At the time of its publication, it was one of the most widely read of his stories.

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Another follow Poe title

What a fun story teller that saves the best for last. Narration brought the story to .life.this

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It’s a great story

The narration was a bit lackluster IMO. The narrator sounds wooden and noncommittal to me. Fun to hear it again though, I haven’t read this story in many years.

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Classic Poe

3.75 of 5 stars.

With the 19th century prose one expects from Poe, "The Gold-Bug" (1843) is an earlier example of Poe's writing which seems suited for a weekly publication. Centered around a treasure hunt using a cryptogram, "The Gold-Bug" one can see an earlier version of Poe's detective fiction (though not technically).

The narration is appropriate for Poe's dense prose and makes the story easier for the modern listener to follow.

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Beautiful, engaging, and rough

No getting around the racist tones and dialect. It’s a rough listen on that front. I loved the words, phrases, and mystery of the story. Poe’s description of cabins, forests, and insanity is just mind-blowing. Such word choices that you can’t help but say some of them out loud and wonder “what in the name of all things does THAT mean?” But then Poe gives such powerful context that you get close to knowing, unless you’re already that smart…ahem. Nice little cruel payoff at the end.

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Interesting

I found this hard to follow, the old English, and sub-par narration had me hanging on every word. people must have had a lot more brain power to follow that mystery.

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3 people found this helpful