The Masque of the Red Death
Complete textA devastating pestilence spreads outside while Prince Prospero withdraws with chosen companions into a fortified abbey. There they arrange entertainments and a lavish masked gathering. Elaborate rooms and determined celebration create an appearance of separation from the suffering beyond their walls, until an unwelcome presence disturbs the revel.
Continue readingAbout The Masque of the Red Death
Color, movement, and the striking clock organize the story’s atmosphere. The guests’ confidence depends on treating their enclosure as an escape from a condition that continues outside. Follow the interruptions in the music and the reactions they provoke, and consider how the arrangement of rooms turns a party into a controlled movement through an increasingly troubling space.
Reading focus
Attend to the colored rooms and recurring clock as an enclosed celebration tries to exclude the reality beyond its walls.
This reading edition contains 2,417 words in 1 original section. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Edgar Allan Poe. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
Contents
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Is this the complete The Masque of the Red Death?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 1 section and 2,417 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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A4 is designed for 210 × 297 mm paper; US Letter for 8.5 × 11 inch paper. Both contain the same complete text, selectable text and section bookmarks.
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