The Spectacles
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3 Months Free
The Spectacles
Buy Now for £0.99
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Narrated by:
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Sam Kusi
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By:
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Edgar Allan Poe
"The Spectacles" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in March 1844 in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. It is one of Poe's comedy tales.
The narrator, 22-year-old Napoleon Buonaparte Froissart, changes his last name to "Simpson" as a requirement to inherit a large sum from a distant cousin, Adolphus Simpson. At the opera he sees a beautiful woman in the audience and falls in love instantly. He describes her beauty at length, despite not being able to see her well; he requires spectacles but, in his vanity, "resolutely refused to employ them". His companion Talbot identifies the woman as Madame Eugenie Lalande, a wealthy widow, and promises to introduce the two. He courts her and proposes marriage; she makes him promise that, on their wedding night, he will wear his spectacles.
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