Fitz-James O'Brien (1828-1862) came to the United States from Ireland in 1852 looking to make his way in the literary world. With impressive recommendations in hand, he had no trouble finding work and immediately started editing and publishing stories and poetry, along with other things, in some of the most influential magazines of the day. When the Civil War began, he joined the Union army and was fatally wounded in 1862. H.P. Lovecraft said of O'Brien, in his important survey of supernatural literature, Supernatural Horror in Literature, "O'Brien's early death undoubtedly deprived us of some masterful tales of strangeness and terror." O'Brien is one of the most important American writers in between the first and the second half of the nineteenth-century. His short stories follow the same natural and supernatural horror, philosophical observations of human nature, and social criticisms as those of the great American triumvirate — Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe. It was Poe that had a particularly strong influence on his writing, but the influence of all three of these writers can be seen in his stories. This collection will be the most complete one-volume edition of O'Brien's works to date. The only one currently in print, which drew from O'Brien's original publications (all other anthologies draw from the flawed first edition anthology of his stories and poems from William Winter). Included in this edition are all his important stories, the ones that he was most known for during his lifetime (e.g., "What Was It?" "The Diamond Lens," and "The Wondersmith"), as well as others that have never been published since their initial publication in the 1850s. All aspects of O'Brien's Gothic will be represented in this edition, the supernatural, urban, fantasy, and tragedy. This volume will be of interest for courses on American Studies as well as courses focusing on Romantic and Gothic Literature, Horror, Science Fiction, or the Humanities. Updated 3rd Edition: Completely revised, corrected, and updated selections drawn from the five volume The Collected Writings of O'Brien.