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Edgar Allan Poe

 
Who2 Biography: Edgar Allan Poe, Writer
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Edgar Allan Poe
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  • Born: 19 January 1809
  • Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
  • Died: 7 October 1849
  • Best Known As: Author of "The Raven"

Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem "The Raven" cemented his reputation as a black-feathered literary master of the macabre. In the late 1820s and early 1830s Poe mixed poetry with work as a soldier in the U.S. Army. He was dismissed from West Point and moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he began writing prose. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s Poe worked on various magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York, and also published creepy short stories and poems, including "The Purloined Letter," "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado." His story The Murders in the Rue Morgue is widely considered to be the first modern detective story, with Poe the forerunner of later masters of the craft like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Never in robust health, and a heavy drinker into the bargain, Poe died under mysterious circumstances at age 40 after visiting Virginia to lecture. He was found languishing on the street in Baltimore and taken unconscious to a local hospital, where he died.

Poe's detective in The Murders in the Rue Morgue was named C. Auguste Dupin... Baltimore's National Football League team, the Ravens, is named in whimsical tribute to Poe's famous poem... Since the 100th anniversary of Poe's death in 1949, an anonymous visitor has come to Poe's grave each year on the writer's birthday, leaving three roses and a bottle of cognac. By tradition no one attempts to follow the "Poe Toaster" and his identity remains unknown. However, it is presumed others have taken over for the original visitor... Poe wrote an 1836 essay unmasking the chess-playing automaton The Turk as a human-powered fraud.

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American Theater Guide: Edgar Allan Poe
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Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–49), critic. The famed American poet and short‐story writer was the son of actors, although he was not raised by them. In 1835 he published sections of an unfinished blank‐verse drama, Politian, and later he occasionally wrote theatrical criticism for various publications, including the Broadway Journal, of which he became owner. As with much of his critical writings, he argued against what he deemed superficial and foreign. However, Poe was a perceptive enough playgoer to quickly, and largely correctly, evaluate the merits of an American effort such as Fashion.

Biography: Edgar Allan Poe
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Unquestionably one of America's major writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was far ahead of his time in his vision of a special area of human experience - the "inner world" of dream, hallucination, and imagination. He wrote fiction, poetry, and criticism and was a magazine editor.

Edgar Allan Poe was best known to his own generation as an editor and critic; his poems and short stories commanded only a small audience. But to some extent in his poems, and to an impressive degree in his tales, he pioneered in opening up areas of human experience for artistic treatment at which his contemporaries only hinted. His vision asserts that reality for the human being is essentially subterranean, contradictory to surface reality, and profoundly irrational in character. Two generations later he was hailed by the symbolist movement as the prophet of the modern sensibility.

Poe was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809, the son of professional actors. By the time he was 3, Edgar, his older brother, and younger sister had lost their mother to consumption and their father through desertion. The children were split up, going to various families to live. Edgar went to the charitable Richmond, Virginia, home of John and Frances Allan, whose name Poe was to take later as his own middle name.

A New Family

The Allans were wealthy then and were to become more so later, and though they never adopted Poe, for many years it appeared that he was to be their heir. They treated him like an adopted son, saw to his education in private academies, and took him to England for a 5-year stay; and at least Mrs. Allan bestowed considerable affection upon him.

As Edgar entered adolescence, however, bad feelings developed between him and John Allan. Allan disapproved of his ward's literary inclinations, thought him surly and ungrateful, and gradually seems to have decided that Poe was not to be his heir after all. When, in 1826, Poe entered the newly opened University of Virginia, Allan's allowance was so meager that Poe turned to gambling to supplement his income. In 8 months he lost $2, 000. Allan's refusal to help him led to total estrangement, and in March 1827 Poe stormed out on his own.

Poe managed to get to Boston, where he signed up for a 5-year enlistment in the U.S. Army. In 1827, as well, he had his Tamerlane and Other Poems published at his own expense, but the book failed to attract notice. By January 1829, serving under the name of Edgar A. Perry, Poe rose to the highest noncommissioned rank in the Army, sergeant major. He was reluctant to serve out the full enlistment, however, and he arranged to be discharged from the Army on the understanding that he would seek an appointment at West Point. He thought that such a move might cause a reconciliation with his guardian. That same year Al Araaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems was published in Baltimore and received a highly favorable notice from the novelist and critic John Neal. Armed with these new credentials, Poe visited Allan in Richmond, but another violent quarrel forced him to leave in May 1830.

The West Point appointment came through the next month, but, since Poe no longer had any use for it, he did not last long as a cadet. Lacking Allan's permission to resign, Poe sought and received a dismissal for "gross neglect of duty" and "disobedience of orders." His guardian, long widowed, had taken a young wife who might well give him an heir, and Poe realized that his hopes of a legacy were without foundation.

Marriage and the Search for a Place

During his early years of exile Poe had lived in Baltimore for a while with his aunt Maria Clemm and her 7-year-old daughter, Virginia. He returned to his aunt's home in 1831, publishing Poems by Edgar Allan Poe and beginning to place short stories in magazines. In 1833 he received a prize for "MS. Found in a Bottle, " and John Pendleton Kennedy got him a job on the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 Poe married his cousin Virginia - now 13 years old - and moved to Richmond with his bride and mother-in-law. Excessive drinking lost him his job in 1837, but he had produced prolifically for the journal. He had contributed his Politian, as well as 83 reviews, 6 poems, 4 essays, and 3 short stories. He had also quintupled the magazine's circulation. Rejection in the face of such accomplishment was extremely distressing to him, and his state of mind from then on, as one biographer put it, "was never very far from panic."

The panic accelerated after 1837. Poe moved with Virginia and her mother to New York, where he did hack work and managed to publish The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). Then they moved to Philadelphia, where Poe served as coeditor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. In 2 years he boosted its circulation from 5, 000 to 20, 000 and contributed some of his best fiction to its pages, including "The Fall of the House of Usher." In 1840, furthermore, he published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. But there was trouble at Burton's, and in 1841 Poe left for the literary editorship of Graham's Magazine.

It was becoming clear that 2 years was about as long as Poe could hold a job, and his stay at Graham's confirmed this principle. Though he contributed skillfully wrought fiction and unquestionably developed as a critic, his endless literary feuding, his alcoholism, and his inability to get along very well with people caused him to leave after 1842.

Illness and Crisis

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man That Was Used Up emerged in 1843, and a Philadelphia newspaper offered a $100 prize for his "The Gold Bug, " but Poe was now facing a kind of psychological adversity against which he was virtually helpless. His wife, who had been an absolutely crucial source of comfort and support to him, began showing signs of the consumption that would eventually kill her. When his burden became too great, he tried to relieve it with alcohol, which made him ill.

After great struggle Poe got a job on the New York Mirror in 1844. He lasted, characteristically, into 1845, switching then to the editorship of the Broadway Journal. Although he was now deep in public literary feuds, things seemed to be breaking in his favor. The 1844 publication of the poem "The Raven" finally brought him some fame, and in 1845 the publication of two volumes, The Raven and Other Poems and Tales, both containing some of his best work, did in fact move him into fashionable literary society. But his wife's health continued to deteriorate, and he was not earning enough money to support her and Clemm.

Poe's next job was with Godey's Lady's Book, but he was unable to sustain steady employment, and amid the din of plagiarism charges and libel suits, his fortunes sank to the point that he and his family almost starved in their Fordham cottage in the winter of 1846. Then, on Jan. 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died.

The wonder is not that Poe began totally to disintegrate but that he nevertheless continued to produce work of very high caliber. In 1848 he published the brilliantly ambitious Eureka, and he was even to make a final, heart-wrenching attempt at rehabilitation. He returned to Richmond in 1849, there to court a now-widowed friend of his youth, Mrs. Shelton. They were to be married, and Poe left for New York at the end of September to bring Clemm back for the wedding. On the way he stopped off in Baltimore. Nobody knows exactly what happened, and there is no real proof that he was picked up by a gang who used him to "repeat" votes, but he was found on October 3 in a stupor near a saloon that had been used as a polling place. He died in a hospital 4 days later.

World of His Work

It is not hard to see the connection between the nightmare of Poe's life and his work. Behind a screen of sometimes substantial, sometimes flimsy "reality, " his fictional work resembles the dreams of a distressed individual who keeps coming back, night after night, to the same pattern of dream. At times he traces out the pattern lightly, at other times in a "thoughtful" mood, but often the tone is terror. He finds himself descending, into a cellar, a wine vault, a whirlpool, always falling. The women he meets either change form into someone else or are whisked away completely. And at last he drops off, into a pit or a river or a walled-up tomb.

Poe's critics interpret this pattern to represent the search of the individual for himself by going deep into himself and his ultimate arrival at the unplumbed mystery of his inner self. This search has come, of course, to characterize much of 20th-century art, and it is the distinguished accomplishment of Poe as an artist that his work looks forward with such startling precision to the work of the century that followed.

Further Reading

Arthur H. Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (1941), is extremely reliable. Two very readable treatments are Hervey Allen, Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1934), and William R. Bittner, Poe: A Biography (1962). A thorough study is Edward C. Wagenknecht, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man behind the Legend (1963). Two critical studies which supplement each other are Patrick F. Quinn, The French Face of Edgar Allan Poe (1957), which concentrates on the fiction, and Edward H. Davidson, Poe: A Critical Study (1957), which emphasizes the poetry. See also Killis Campbell, The Mind of Poe (1933); Haldeen Braddy, Glorious Incense: The Fulfillment of Edgar Allan Poe (1953); and Harry Levin, The Power of Blackness (1958). Perry Miller, The Raven and the Whale: The War of Words and Wits in the Era of Poe and Melville (1956), and Sidney P. Moss, Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu (1963), discuss Poe in the context of his times. For a full list of Poe's works see Robert E. Spiller and others, eds., Literary History of the United States, vol. 3 (1948; 3d rev. ed. 1963).

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Edgar Allan Poe
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(born Jan. 19, 1809, Boston, Mass., U.S. — died Oct. 7, 1849, Baltimore, Md.) U.S. poet, critic, and short-story writer. Poe was raised by foster parents in Richmond, Va., following his mother's death in 1811. He briefly attended the University of Virginia and then returned to Boston, where in 1827 he published a pamphlet of youthful, Byronic poems. By 1835 he was in Richmond as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, the first of several periodicals he was to edit or write for. There he married a 13-year-old cousin, who died in 1847. At various times he lived in Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. Alcohol, the bane of his irregular and eccentric life, caused his death at age 40. His works are famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. Among his tales are "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Black Cat," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Pit and the Pendulum." "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" initiated the modern detective story. His poems (less highly regarded now than formerly) are musical and sensuous, as in "The Bells," a showcase of sound effects; they include touching lyrics inspired by women (e.g., "Annabel Lee") and the uncanny (e.g., "The Raven").

For more information on Edgar Allan Poe, visit Britannica.com.

French Literature Companion: Edgar Allen Poe
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Poe, Edgar Allen (1809-49). Described by Mallarmé as ‘ce cas littéraire absolu’, Poe occupies a more significant place in the history of French literature than in that of his native America. This French version of Poe, made available by Baudelaire's translations of and introductions to his work (1848-65), itself contained two distinct strands. On the one hand there was the poet of the macabre, whose Extraordinary Tales renewed French Gothic fiction through their exploration of psychological terror and portrayed a network of feelings on the edge of normal psychic life (loss of the mother, obsession with the body, permeable borders between living and dead) on which the Decadents and Surrealists would draw. On the other, there was the mathematician of poetic effects, whose Philosophy of Composition, with its theory of poetry as an autonomous and deliberate object of language and its attack on lyrical effusion, didacticism, and sentimentality, reinforced the French tradition of ‘l' art pour l'art’ and profoundly influenced Mallarmé and Valéry. The diversity of critical approaches which Poe's work has always stimulated in France has been very evident in modern literary theory in such work as Bachelard's 1944 preface to Baudelaire's translation of The Adventures of Gordon Pym and the seminal debate initiated by Lacan's Structuralist analysis of The Purloined Letter (1966) and Derrida's Post-Structuralist response (1972).

[James Kearns]

US History Companion: Poe, Edgar Allan
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(1809-1849), short-story writer, poet, and critic. The son of itinerant actors, Poe was orphaned at two and was adopted by John Allan, a Richmond, Virginia, merchant and his wife. They gave Poe his middle name and a genteel childhood but eventually became the source of profound unhappiness. Allan was unfaithful to his wife, and when Poe took her part, Allan turned on him savagely. Although Allan violently opposed Poe's literary career, he unwittingly encouraged it. His firm imported many foreign books and magazines, which Poe read assiduously, giving him a literary sophistication far beyond his Richmond peers. Allan sent Poe to the University of Virginia with no spending money; when the boy ran up heavy gambling debts, his foster father refused to pay. After a bitter quarrel, Poe left home to seek literary fame.

Poe moved to Boston in 1827 where he published a book of poems but almost starved. He enlisted in the army and soon became sergeant major of his regiment. A reconciliation with Allan, motivated largely by Poe's hope of an inheritance, led to an appointment to West Point. There he began brilliantly, but another falling out with Allan plunged him into depression. He stopped attending classes and drills and was dismissed in 1831. His cadet friends helped finance a book of poems containing some of his best lyrics, "Israfel" and "The Doomed City," but the book was hardly noticed.

Poe spent the next years living in Baltimore with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. One of his best stories, "A MS. Found in a Bottle," won him a job on the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. He proved an able editor, greatly increasing circulation. But he had begun drinking heavily, and he soon parted company with the magazine.

In 1836 he married Virginia Clemm, who was only thirteen, and departed with her and Mrs. Clemm for the North. For the next several years he alternated between editing and writing, publishing both poetry and prose, in particular The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, a tale of shipwreck and picturesque horrors in the South Seas. As literary editor of Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, which had a large circulation, Poe became a major figure in American letters, making enemies by the score with his trenchant criticism. But alcohol cost him this job, too.

He continued to write, however, producing "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Gold Bug," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget" in a cool style that was the polar opposite of his romantic poems and horror stories. If he did not invent the detective story with these tales, he perfected it.

In 1842, inspired in part by a talk with Charles Dickens, Poe wrote "The Raven," his best-known poem. It was an immense success and almost instantly won Poe the fame for which he hungered. But money did not come with it: he still earned as little as four dollars for an article, fifteen dollars for a story. Tormented by poverty, Poe watched his wife die of tuberculosis. He became more and more unstable, drinking and taking opium, at one point attempting suicide with the drug. He published a grandiose prose poem, "Eureka," which combined half-baked science and dubious cosmogony. Returning to Richmond, he swore off liquor and became engaged to one of his youthful loves, now a rich widow. But a trip to Baltimore led to a fatal drinking bout.

As an editor Poe struggled to raise American literature to the level of his own formidable intelligence and talent. His instability doomed this ambition to failure, but his own artistry somehow survived his impulse for self-destruction. Poe added the concept of professionalism to the role of the writer in America. For him language and its artful use was virtually an end in itself, transcending ideology.

Bibliography:

Julian Symons, The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1978); Edward Wagenknecht, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man behind the Legend (1963).

Author:

Thomas Fleming

See also Literature.


 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Edgar Allan Poe
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Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-49, American poet, short-story writer, and critic, b. Boston. He is acknowledged today as one of the most brilliant and original writers in American literature. His skillfully wrought tales and poems convey with passionate intensity the mysterious, dreamlike, and often macabre forces that pervaded his sensibility. He is also considered the father of the modern detective story.

Early Life and Works

After the death of his parents, both of whom were actors, by the time he was three years old, Poe was taken into the home of his godfather, John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant. The Allans took him to Europe, where he began his education in schools in England and Scotland. Returning to the United States in 1820, he continued his schooling in Richmond and in 1826 entered the Univ. of Virginia. He showed remarkable scholastic ability in classical and romance languages but was forced to leave the university after only eight months because of quarrels with Allan over his gambling debts. Poverty soon forced him to enlist in the army.

Because of the deathbed plea of his foster mother, he achieved an unenthusiastic reconciliation with Allan, which resulted in an honorable discharge from the army and an appointment to West Point in 1830. However, when Allan remarried the following year Poe lost all hope of further assistance from him and was expelled from the Academy for infraction of numerous minor rules. His first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, was published in 1827. It was followed by two more volumes of verse in 1829 and 1831. None of these early collections attracted critical or popular recognition. Poe went to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, and her daughter Virginia. In 1835, J. P. Kennedy helped him become an editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. He contributed stories, poems, and astute literary criticism, but his drinking lost him the editorship.

Later Life and Mature Works

In 1836 Poe married Virginia Clemm, then only 13, and in 1837 they went to New York City, where he published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). From 1838 to 1844, Poe lived in Philadelphia, where he edited Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (1839-40) and Graham's Magazine (1841-42). His criticism, which appeared in these magazines and in the Messenger, was direct and incisive and made him a respected and feared critic. Some of his magazine stories were collected as Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). At that time he also began writing mystery stories. In 1844, Poe moved back to New York, where he worked on the Evening Mirror and later edited and owned the Broadway Journal.

The Raven and Other Poems (1845) won him fame as a poet both at home and abroad. In 1846 he moved to the Fordham cottage (now a museum) and there wrote "The Literati of New York City" for Godey's Lady's Book. His wife died in 1847, and by the following year Poe was courting the poet Sarah Helen Whitman. However, in 1849 he returned to Richmond and became engaged to Elmira Royster, a childhood sweetheart who was by then the widowed Mrs. Shelton. On his way north to bring Mrs. Clemm to the wedding, he became involved in a drinking debauch in Baltimore. This indulgence proved fatal, for he died a few days later.

Assessment

Poe's literary executor, R. W. Griswold, overemphasized Poe's personal faults and distorted his letters. Poe was a complex person, tormented and alcoholic yet also considerate and humorous, a good friend, and an affectionate husband. Indeed, his painful life, his neurotic attraction to intense beauty, violent horror, and death, and his sense of the world of dreams contributed to his greatness as a writer. Such compelling stories as "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" involve the reader in a universe that is at once beautiful and grotesque, real and fantastic.

His poems (including "To Helen," "The Raven," "The City in the Sea," "The Bells," and "Annabel Lee") are rich with musical phrases and sensuous, at times frightening, images. Poe was also an intelligent and witty critic who often theorized about the art of writing. The analytical mind he brought to criticism is evident also in his famous stories of ratiocination, notably "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." Poe influenced such diverse authors as Swinburne, Tennyson, Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle, and the French symbolists.

Bibliography

See his collected poems and stories (3 vol., 1969-78); his letters, ed. by J. W. Ostrom (2 vol., 1948, repr. 1966); biographies by J. Symons (1981), D. Thomas and D. K. Jackson (1987), K. Silverman (1991), and J. Meyers (1992); studies by D. Hoffman (1972), B. L. Knapp (1984), J. G. Kennedy (1989), and D. Stashower (2006).

Works: Works by Edgar Allan Poe
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(1809-1849)

1827Tamerlane and Other Poems. Poe's first collection of verse is published anonymously. The Byronic title poem concerns the Mongol conqueror's dying confession of a love affair and is based on Poe's relationship with Sarah Elmira Royster. Also included are "Visit of the Dead," "The Lake," "Evening Star," and "Imitation."
1829Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems. Poe's second collection of poetry contains the humorous poem "Fairyland" and "Al Aaraaf," an allegorical poem depicting Poe's conception of this place from Arabic mythology--a star on which the "Idea of Beauty" was born. The poem concerns Angelo, a passionate young man, who hopes to enter Al Aaraaf, but an earthbound love keeps him from hearing his call from Nesace, the presiding spirit.
1831Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Second Edition. A collection of verse containing early, unrevised versions of some of Poe's most significant poems, including "To Helen, Israfel," and "The Doomed City." Although little noticed outside the circle of West Point cadets to whom Poe dedicated the book, biographer Kenneth Silverman notes that its "most marked feature is a preoccupation with death and the afterlife." Also significant is the preface, "Letter to B," in which Poe begins to build his critical theories, borrowing liberally from Coleridge.
1833"MS. Found in a Bottle." Poe's tale, based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, depicts a seaman forced to stay at sea until Judgment Day. It wins the Baltimore Saturday Visitor's $50 prize for the best story and introduces Poe to John Pendleton Kennedy, one of the contest's judges, who would assist Poe with his publishing endeavors, most notably by introducing him to the T. W. White, the editor of the newly established Southern Literary Messenger.
1835Politian: A Tragedy. Three scenes of Poe's unfinished blank-verse drama based on the Beauchamp-Sharp murder case known as the Kentucky Tragedy but set in sixteenth-century Rome are published in the Southern Literary Messenger. It would be published in its entirety in 1923.
1835"Berenice." Poe's first story to be published in the Southern Literary Messenger after John Pendleton Kennedy had introduced him to the editor, T. W. White. In the story Egaeus is captivated by the white teeth of his beloved cousin Berenice, and when she falls into a trance after an epileptic seizure, he believes she has died and removes her teeth. Although White feared the story too grotesque for the magazine, Poe had convinced him that articles that are "ludicrous heightened into the grotesque" sell magazines. This initial publication would lead to Poe's numerous story contributions, critical reviews, and editorship of the Messenger. Poe also publishes "Morella" in the Southern Literary Messenger; it would be later included in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Poe's story, regarded as a preliminary workup of his later work "Ligeia," concerns a dying woman who vows to return to life to punish her unloving husband. Poe's tale "The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal," describing a trip to the moon, is published in the Southern Literary Messenger and is one of the earliest examples of American science fiction.
1838"Ligeia." One of Poe's most famous stories and the one its author cited as his best is the tale of a woman who becomes ill and dies, though she has great desire to live. After her husband marries a woman he does not love, Rowena, Ligeia's powerful will to live brings her back into the body of Rowena. First published in the Baltimore Museum, it would be included in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Poe also publishes The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket, a fictional tale based partially on fact concerning the sea adventures of a young boy who stows away on a New Bedford whaler, which sails from Nantucket to the South Seas in 1827. Poe had used J. N. Reynolds's "Report of the Committee on Naval Affairs" (1836) and Benjamin Morell's Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Seas and Pacific (1832) as sources for the work.
1839"The Haunted Palace." Written when Poe's financial situation forced him to write tales instead of verse, this is considered one of his best poems. Originally published in the Baltimore Museum, it would later be included in "The Fall of the House of Usher." The poem is an allegory of mental states, with the palace taking the form of a human head that is attacked by evil.
1839"The Fall of the House of Usher." Poe's classic horror story concerns the last remaining members of a cursed family, a twin brother and sister who die simultaneously. It is the most significant work that Poe contributed to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, which he coedited during his most prolific literary period. Poe also publishes "William Wilson." Considered one of Poe's best stories, it concerns a man haunted since his youth by his alter ego, whom he eventually kills in a sword fight. At his death, his double tells Wilson, "In me didst thou exist--and in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself." The story would be a source for Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1885).
1840Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Poe's first collection contains twenty-five short stories including "MS. Found in a Bottle," "William Wilson," "Ligeia," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." Although favorably received and a boost to Poe's national reputation, slow sales meant that Poe received no royalties. Though the title page reads 1840, the collection is actually published in Philadelphia in 1839. Poe also publishes "The Journals of Julius Rodman, Being an Account of the First Passage Across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man," a work of fiction written by Poe but kept anonymous. The story of exploration beyond the Rocky Mountains is purportedly taken from the journal of Rodman, a fictional English immigrant whose heirs find his writings. The descriptions of land and travel experiences are based largely on Irving's Astoria and the accounts of Lewis and Clark and of Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Many readers believe the tale to be nonfiction.
1841"A Descent into the Maelstrom." First published in Graham's Magazine and to be included in Prose Tales (1843), Poe's adventure story describes a Norwegian sailor and his brother who are drawn into a massive whirlpool. Poe also publishes "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, where he is editor. This story is the pioneer work of modern detective fiction. The detective, Auguste Dupin, analyzes evidence to solve the murder of a mother and daughter.
1842"Review of New Books:" Twice-Told Tales. Poe's review of Hawthorne's collection sets forth Poe's theory of the short story. He argues that the form is the most "advantageous field of exertion" since a short story can be read in one sitting. He further states that the effect of a tale should be known to the author before commencing, and all should contribute to the "preconceived effect." Poe's analysis supplies the theoretical underpinnings for the evolution of the modern short story.
1842"The Masque of the Red Death." One of the author's finest stories is an allegorical tale of Prince Prospero's attempt to escape the plague by hiding away with his friends in an isolated castle. Published in Graham's Magazine, it illustrates that death cannot be escaped. The Red Death appears at a masquerade Prospero is holding in his castle and kills everyone in attendance. Poe also publishes "The Mystery of Marie Roget." The sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," it is a detective story based on an actual New York murder case. Poe's story "Eleonora," a romantic tale about a youth who falls in love with his cousin, also appears in this year.
1843"The Black Cat." One of Poe's finest horror stories is a psychological tale first published in the U.S. Saturday Post and later included in Tales (1845); it has been much anthologized. In the story a man murders his wife and entombs her in a cellar wall, accidentally enclosing a cat with her. The cat's cries reveal his guilt. Poe also publishes "The Gold Bug," a tale of Captain Kidd's buried treasure on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, and its discovery by a poor Southern gentleman. The suspenseful tale is one of the first to employ a buried treasure theme and a hidden message in a cipher. It wins a great deal of attention for the struggling author and the $100 first prize in the Dollar newspaper literary contest. In the same year "The Pit and the Pendulum" appears in the Gift. The story describes the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition in a thrilling horror tale. Poe also publishes "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which a madman betrays his crime when he thinks he hears the beating heart of the man he has murdered.
1844"The Raven." Submitted to the New York Evening Mirror, where Poe had been undertaking the menial tasks of a "mechanical paragraphist," the poem concerns the loss of a beloved woman and brings Poe celebrity status. It would be first published in the American Whig Review in 1845 and lead to his important critical essay "The Philosophy of Composition," to be published in the April 1846 issue of Graham's, in which he describes his writing process.
1844"The Balloon Hoax." Poe's story first appears in the New York Sun in the guise of an actual article reporting on a balloon crossing of the Atlantic.
1845The Raven and Other Poems. A collection containing all of Poe's verse to date. Biographer Hervey Allen would write that it "may be said to have been the finest contribution to poetry so far by an American."
1845Tales. Evert A. Duyckinck collects Poe's previously printed works, including "The Black Cat" and "The Purloined Letter."
1846"The Cask of Amontillado." First published in Godey's Lady's Book, the work is the last of Poe's famous and frequently anthologized psychological crime stories. Set in an Italian city during Carnival, it follows Montresor as he leads Fortunato into his underground vaults with promises of a premium wine, but then walls him in to die.
1846The Literati of New York. A series of sketches frankly critiquing the writing, personalities, and appearances of New York authors, including Caroline Stansbury Kirkland, Epes Sargent, the members of the Knickerbocker group, and others. His negative remarks about Thomas Dunn English bring a bristling response; Poe would respond by suing the New York Mirror for libel. Poe also publishes "The Philosophy of Composition." Among the most famous works of literary criticism, this essay is published in Graham's Magazine and describes the process of writing poetry, primarily discussing Poe's procedures in composing "The Raven." Poe explains the importance of keeping a poem brief enough to read in one sitting and his use of a refrain. He declares that poems should be about beauty, and the death of a beautiful woman is therefore "the most poetical topic in the world."
1848Eureka: A Prose Poem by Edgar A. Poe. In a metaphysical treatise inspired by the scientists Isaac Newton and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Poe reconciles conflicting theories of the origin of the universe by suggesting that there is an order to the cosmos, but that annihilation is a component of the order. The work would influence many writers, including France's Paul Valéry.
1848The Poetic Principle. Poe sets forth his precepts of poetry in this 1848 lecture that would be published posthumously in 1850. He asserts the importance of emotion in lyrical endeavors and presents eleven American and English poems that he considers works of art.

Quotes By: Edgar Allan Poe
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Quotes:

"Thank Heaven! the crisis --The danger, is past, and the lingering illness, is over at last --, and the fever called Living is conquered at last."

"To be thoroughly conversant with a man's heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair."

"All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream."

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

"Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so."

See more famous quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

The Vampire Book: Edgar Allan Poe (18091849)
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Edgar Allan Poe, American writer of horror stories, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of David Poe, Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins. His parents, both actors, died of tuberculosis in 1811. Young Edgar then lived with John Allan, a merchant, and incorporated his benefactor's name into his own. He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, but after a falling out with John Allan he dropped out and joined the army. His first book, a collection of his poems, was published in 1827 shortly after his tenure in the army began. In 1830, after a brief reconciliation with John Allan, Poe was sent to West Point, but was expelled for disobedient behavior. In 1831 he discovered an aunt in Baltimore, where he had moved to take a newspaper job. In 1835 he married Virginia Clemm, his aunt's daughter. During the 12 years of their marriage (she died in 1847) he moved from one job to the next, drinking heavily, and perpetually broke. Poe himself died on a drinking binge-he was left in a gutter. His literary executor wrote a scurrilous biography that turned people from Poe during the rest of the century.

Rediscovered in this century, an extensive and appreciative new readership was found for both his poetry and short stories, many of which have been turned into movies. While Poe explored many areas of the gothic world, he never specifically wrote a vampire story. Contemporary critics, however, have found widespread use of a vampire-or lamiai-like character in his various writings. Amid the actual vampirism encountered in the literature of the early nineteenth century, historians studying the period have noted that many writers considered a more metaphorical or psychic vampirism in which the vampirelike character sucks the life force or psychic energy from another, usually a person close to them. As early as the 1930s, D. H. Lawrence recognized such a theme in Poe's work.

More recently James B Twitchell carried Lawrence's position even further and argued that "the development of the vampire analogy was one of Poe's central artistic concerns." Twitchell saw the vampire (or lamiai, since his vampires were usually female) theme in a number of Poe's stories, particularly "Bernice," "Morella," "Ligeia," "The Oval Portrait," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." In "Bernice," Poe told the story of a man originally in a weakened condition who seemed to grow more robust as his cousin Bernice declined and finally died. In the end, however, it was Bernice who became the vampire, a fact signaled by her paleness, lifeless eyes, and prominent teeth. The narrator of the story became increasingly afraid and after Bernice died, he went to the grave to slay the vampire by pulling her teeth.

Bernice was but the first of the supposed female vampires created by Poe. Morella, in a story written shortly after "Bernice," bled the narrator of her story of his willpower. She also possessed the vampire's identifying marks: cold hands, hypnotic eyes, and a bloodless face. In like measure, the title character in "Ligeia" (1938) possessed a lamiai's likeness with her cold hands, pale appearance, prominent teeth, and hypnotic eyes. In these first three stories, suggested Twitchell, Poe used the vampiric theme to highlight a form of relationship between lovers. He returned to the theme in "The Fall of the House of Usher" in which the vampiric exchange of energy occurred between siblings. Finally, in "The Oval Portrait," Poe wove a fascinating story of an artist who destroyed those around him by his all-consuming passion with his work. The story concerned an artist who was painting the portrait of his beautiful wife, not noticing that as he painted she grew weaker and weaker. He concluded his work by declaring it the essence of life itself. He eventually found his wife dead, completely drained of life.

Twitchell's interpretations highlighted, if not a central theme, certainly an important and somewhat neglected secondary motif in Poe, a motif all the more significant due to its widespread use in the writings of so many of Poe's prominent contemporaries.

Bailey, J. O. "What Happens in `The Fall of the House of Usher'?" American Literature 35 (1964): 445-66.
Blythe, Hal, and Charlie Sweet. "Poe's Satiric Use of Vampirism in `Bernice.'" Poe Studies 14, 1 (June 1981): 23-24.
Kendall, Lyle H., Jr. "The Vampire Motif in `The Fall of the House of Usher.'" College English 24 (1963) 450-53.
Kiessling, Nicolas. "Variations of Vampirism." Poe Studies 14, 1 (June 1981): 14-14.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works. Ed. by James A Harrison. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1902. The stories considered above have been frequently reprinted in various collections.
Richmond, Lee. "Edgar Allan Poe's `Morella': Vampire of Volition." Studies in Short Fiction 9 (1972): 93-94.
Twitchell, James. The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1981. 219 pp.
---. "Poe's `The Oval Portrait' and the Vampire Motif." Studies in Short Fiction 14, 4 (Fall 1977): 387-93.

Wikipedia: Edgar Allan Poe
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"Poe" redirects here. For other uses, see Poe (disambiguation).
This article is about the American writer. For the attorney general of Maryland, see Edgar Allan Poe (Maryland attorney general).
Edgar Allan Poe

1848 daguerreotype of Poe
Born January 19, 1809(1809-01-19)
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Died October 7, 1849 (aged 40)
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Occupation Poet, short-story writer, editor, literary critic
Genres Horror fiction, Gothic romance, crime fiction, detective fiction
Literary movement Romanticism
Spouse(s) Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe
Signature

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.[1] He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[2]

He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; his parents died when he was young. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. After spending a short period at the University of Virginia and briefly attempting a military career, Poe parted ways with the Allans. Poe's publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move between several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years later. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.[3]

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today.

Contents

Life and career

Early life

This plaque marks the approximate location where Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

He was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second child of actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. He had an elder brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister, Rosalie Poe.[4] Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeare's King Lear, a play the couple was performing in 1809.[5] His father abandoned their family in 1810,[6] and his mother died a year later from consumption. Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful Scottish merchant in Richmond, Virginia, who dealt in a variety of goods including tobacco, cloth, wheat, tombstones, and slaves.[7] The Allans served as a foster family but never formally adopted Poe,[8] though they gave him the name "Edgar Allan Poe".[9]

The Allan family had Poe baptized in the Episcopal Church in 1812. John Allan alternately spoiled and aggressively disciplined his foster son.[9] The family, including Poe and Allan's wife, Frances Valentine Allan, sailed to England in 1815. Poe attended the grammar school in Irvine, Scotland (where John Allan was born) for a short period in 1815, before rejoining the family in London in 1816. There he studied at a boarding school in Chelsea until summer 1817. He was subsequently entered at the Reverend John Bransby’s Manor House School at Stoke Newington, then a suburb four miles (6 km) north of London.[10]

Poe moved back with the Allans to Richmond, Virginia in 1820. In 1824 Poe served as the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor guard as Richmond celebrated the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette[1]. In March 1825, John Allan's uncle[11] and business benefactor William Galt, said to be one of the wealthiest men in Richmond, died and left Allan several acres of real estate. The inheritance was estimated at $750,000. By summer 1825, Allan celebrated his expansive wealth by purchasing a two-story brick home named Moldavia.[12] Poe may have become engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster before he registered at the one-year-old University of Virginia in February 1826 to study languages.[13] The university, in its infancy, was established on the ideals of its founder, Thomas Jefferson. It had strict rules against gambling, horses, guns, tobacco and alcohol, but these rules were generally ignored. Jefferson had enacted a system of student self-government, allowing students to choose their own studies, make their own arrangements for boarding, and report all wrongdoing to the faculty. The unique system was still in chaos, and there was a high dropout rate.[14] During his time there, Poe lost touch with Royster and also became estranged from his foster father over gambling debts. Poe claimed that Allan had not given him sufficient money to register for classes, purchase texts, and procure and furnish a dormitory. Allan did send additional money and clothes, but Poe's debts increased.[15] Poe gave up on the university after a year, and, not feeling welcome in Richmond, especially when he learned that his sweetheart Royster had married Alexander Shelton, he traveled to Boston in April 1827, sustaining himself with odd jobs as a clerk and newspaper writer.[16] At some point he started using the pseudonym Henri Le Rennet.[17]

Military career

Poe was first stationed at Boston's Fort Independence while in the army.

Unable to support himself, on May 27, 1827, Poe enlisted in the United States Army as a private. Using the name "Edgar A. Perry", he claimed he was 22 years old even though he was 18.[18] He first served at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor for five dollars a month.[16] That same year, he released his first book, a 40-page collection of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems, attributed with the byline "by a Bostonian". Only 50 copies were printed, and the book received virtually no attention.[19] Poe's regiment was posted to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina and traveled by ship on the brig Waltham on November 8, 1827. Poe was promoted to "artificer", an enlisted tradesman who prepared shells for artillery, and had his monthly pay doubled.[20] After serving for two years and attaining the rank of Sergeant Major for Artillery (the highest rank a noncommissioned officer can achieve), Poe sought to end his five-year enlistment early. He revealed his real name and his circumstances to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Howard. Howard would only allow Poe to be discharged if he reconciled with John Allan and wrote a letter to Allan, who was unsympathetic. Several months passed and pleas to Allan were ignored; Allan may not have written to Poe even to make him aware of his foster mother's illness. Frances Allan died on February 28, 1829, and Poe visited the day after her burial. Perhaps softened by his wife's death, John Allan agreed to support Poe's attempt to be discharged in order to receive an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point.[21]

Poe finally was discharged on April 15, 1829, after securing a replacement to finish his enlisted term for him.[22] Before entering West Point, Poe moved back to Baltimore for a time, to stay with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, her daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm (Poe's first cousin), his brother Henry, and his invalid grandmother Elizabeth Cairnes Poe.[23] Meanwhile, Poe published his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, in Baltimore in 1829.[24]

Poe traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1, 1830.[25] In October 1830, John Allan married his second wife, Louisa Patterson.[26] The marriage, and bitter quarrels with Poe over the children born to Allan out of affairs, led to the foster father finally disowning Poe.[27] Poe decided to leave West Point by purposely getting court-martialed. On February 8, 1831, he was tried for gross neglect of duty and disobedience of orders for refusing to attend formations, classes, or church. Poe tactically pled not guilty to induce dismissal, knowing he would be found guilty.[28]

He left for New York in February 1831, and released a third volume of poems, simply titled Poems. The book was financed with help from his fellow cadets at West Point, many of whom donated 75 cents to the cause, raising a total of $170. They may have been expecting verses similar to the satirical ones Poe had been writing about commanding officers.[29] Printed by Elam Bliss of New York, it was labeled as "Second Edition" and included a page saying, "To the U.S. Corps of Cadets this volume is respectfully dedicated." The book once again reprinted the long poems "Tamerlane" and "Al Aaraaf" but also six previously unpublished poems including early versions of "To Helen", "Israfel", and "The City in the Sea".[30] He returned to Baltimore, to his aunt, brother and cousin, in March 1831. His elder brother Henry, who had been in ill health in part due to problems with alcoholism, died on August 1, 1831.[31]

Publishing career

After his brother's death, Poe began more earnest attempts to start his career as a writer. He chose a difficult time in American publishing to do so.[32] He was the first well-known American to try to live by writing alone[2][33] and was hampered by the lack of an international copyright law.[34] Publishers often pirated copies of British works rather than paying for new work by Americans.[33] The industry was also particularly hurt by the Panic of 1837.[35] Despite a booming growth in American periodicals around this time period, fueled in part by new technology, many did not last beyond a few issues[36] and publishers often refused to pay their writers or paid them much later than they promised.[37] Poe, throughout his attempts at pursuing a successful literary career, would be forced to constantly make humiliating pleas for money and other assistance for the rest of his life.[38]

Poe married his 13-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her early death may have inspired some of his writing.

After his early attempts at poetry, Poe had turned his attention to prose. He placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began work on his only drama, Politian. The Saturday Visitor, a Baltimore paper, awarded Poe a prize in October 1833 for his short story "MS. Found in a Bottle".[39] The story brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, a Baltimorian of considerable means. He helped Poe place some of his stories, and introduced him to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe became assistant editor of the periodical in August 1835;[40] however, within a few weeks, he was discharged after being found drunk repeatedly.[41] Returning to Baltimore, Poe secretly married Virginia, his cousin, on September 22, 1835. She was 13 at the time, though she is listed on the marriage certificate as being 21.[42] Reinstated by White after promising good behavior, Poe went back to Richmond with Virginia and her mother. He remained at the Messenger until January 1837. During this period, Poe claimed that its circulation increased from 700 to 3,500.[4] He published several poems, book reviews, critiques, and stories in the paper. On May 16, 1836, he had a second wedding ceremony in Richmond with Virginia Clemm, this time in public.[43]

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was published and widely reviewed in 1838.[44] In the summer of 1839, Poe became assistant editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. He published numerous articles, stories, and reviews, enhancing his reputation as a trenchant critic that he had established at the Southern Literary Messenger. Also in 1839, the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes, though he made little money off of it and it received mixed reviews.[45] Poe left Burton's after about a year and found a position as assistant at Graham's Magazine.[46]

In June 1840, Poe published a prospectus announcing his intentions to start his own journal, The Stylus.[47] Originally, Poe intended to call the journal The Penn, as it would have been based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the June 6, 1840 issue of Philadelphia's Saturday Evening Post, Poe bought advertising space for his prospectus: "Prospectus of the Penn Magazine, a Monthly Literary journal to be edited and published in the city of Philadelphia by Edgar A. Poe."[48] The journal would never be produced before Poe's death. Around this time, he attempted to secure a position with the Tyler administration, claiming he was a member of the Whig Party.[49] He hoped to be appointed to the Custom House in Philadelphia with help from President Tyler's son Robert,[50] an acquaintance of Poe's friend Frederick Thomas.[51] Poe failed to show up for a meeting with Thomas to discuss the appointment in mid-September 1842, claiming to be sick, though Thomas believed he was drunk.[52] Though he was promised an appointment, all positions were filled by others.[53]

Poe spent the last few years of his life in a small cottage in the Bronx, New York.

One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano. Poe described it as breaking a blood vessel in her throat.[54] She only partially recovered. Poe began to drink more heavily under the stress of Virginia's illness. He left Graham's and attempted to find a new position, for a time angling for a government post. He returned to New York, where he worked briefly at the Evening Mirror before becoming editor of the Broadway Journal and, later, sole owner.[55] There he alienated himself from other writers by publicly accusing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism, though Longfellow never responded.[56] On January 29, 1845, his poem "The Raven" appeared in the Evening Mirror and became a popular sensation. Though it made Poe a household name almost instantly,[57] he was paid only $9 for its publication.[58]

The Broadway Journal failed in 1846.[55] Poe moved to a cottage in the Fordham section of The Bronx, New York. That home, known today as the "Poe Cottage", is on the southeast corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road. Virginia died there on January 30, 1847.[59] Biographers and critics often suggest Poe's frequent theme of the "death of a beautiful woman" stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his wife.[60]

Increasingly unstable after his wife's death, Poe attempted to court the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Their engagement failed, purportedly because of Poe's drinking and erratic behavior. However, there is also strong evidence that Whitman's mother intervened and did much to derail their relationship.[61] Poe then returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with a childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster.[62]

Death

Edgar Allan Poe is buried in Baltimore, Maryland. The circumstances and cause of his death remain uncertain.
Main article: Death of Edgar Allan Poe

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker.[63] He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning.[64] Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Some sources say Poe's final words were "Lord help my poor soul."[64] All medical records, including his death certificate, have been lost.[65] Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation", common euphemisms for deaths from disreputable causes such as alcoholism.[66] However, the actual cause of death remains a mystery;[67] from as early as 1872, cooping was commonly believed to have been the cause,[68] and speculation has included delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation,[3] cholera[69] and rabies.[70]

Griswold's "Memoir"

The day Edgar Allan Poe was buried, a long obituary appeared in the New York Tribune signed "Ludwig". It was soon published throughout the country. The piece began, "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it."[71] "Ludwig" was soon identified as Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor, critic and anthologist who had borne a grudge against Poe since 1842. Griswold somehow became Poe's literary executor and attempted to destroy his enemy's reputation after his death.[72]

Rufus Griswold wrote a biographical article of Poe called "Memoir of the Author", which he included in an 1850 volume of the collected works. Griswold depicted Poe as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman and included Poe's letters as evidence.[72] Many of his claims were either outright lies or distorted half-truths. For example, it is now known that Poe was not a drug addict.[73] Griswold's book was denounced by those who knew Poe well,[74] but it became a popularly accepted one. This occurred in part because it was the only full biography available and was widely reprinted and in part because readers thrilled at the thought of reading works by an "evil" man.[75] Letters that Griswold presented as proof of this depiction of Poe were later revealed as forgeries.[76]

Literary style and themes

1860s portrait by Oscar Halling after an 1849 daguerreotype

Genres

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic,[77] a genre he followed to appease the public taste.[78] His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning.[79] Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism,[80] which Poe strongly disliked.[81] He referred to followers of the movement as "Frogpondians" after the pond on Boston Common.[82] and ridiculed their writings as "metaphor-run", lapsing into "obscurity for obscurity's sake" or "mysticism for mysticism's sake."[83] Poe once wrote in a letter to Thomas Holley Chivers that he did not dislike Transcendentalists, "only the pretenders and sophists among them."[84]

Beyond horror, Poe also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes. For comic effect, he used irony and ludicrous extravagance, often in an attempt to liberate the reader from cultural conformity.[78] In fact, "Metzengerstein", the first story that Poe is known to have published,[85] and his first foray into horror, was originally intended as a burlesque satirizing the popular genre.[86] Poe also reinvented science fiction, responding in his writing to emerging technologies such as hot air balloons in "The Balloon-Hoax".[87]

Poe wrote much of his work using themes specifically catered for mass market tastes.[88] To that end, his fiction often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology[89] and physiognomy.[90]

Literary theory

Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as "The Poetic Principle".[91] He disliked didacticism[92] and allegory,[93] though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface. Works with obvious meanings, he wrote, cease to be art.[94] He believed that quality work should be brief and focus on a specific single effect.[91] To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea.[95] In "The Philosophy of Composition", an essay in which Poe describes his method in writing "The Raven", he claims to have strictly followed this method. It has been questioned, however, if he really followed this system. T. S. Eliot said: "It is difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his poem with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pains over it: the result hardly does credit to the method."[96] Biographer Joseph Wood Krutch described the essay as "a rather highly ingenious exercise in the art of rationalization".[97]

Legacy

Illustration by French impressionist Édouard Manet for the Stéphane Mallarmé translation of "The Raven", 1875. Digitally restored.

Literary influence

During his lifetime, Poe was mostly recognized as a literary critic. Fellow critic James Russell Lowell called him "the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America", though he questioned if he occasionally used prussic acid instead of ink.[98] Poe was also known as a writer of fiction and became one of the first American authors of the 19th century to become more popular in Europe than in the United States.[99] Poe is particularly respected in France, in part due to early translations by Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire's translations became definitive renditions of Poe's work throughout Europe.[100]

Poe's early detective fiction tales starring the fictitious C. Auguste Dupin laid the groundwork for future detectives in literature. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said, "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed.... Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"[101] The Mystery Writers of America have named their awards for excellence in the genre the "Edgars".[102] Poe's work also influenced science fiction, notably Jules Verne, who wrote a sequel to Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket called An Antarctic Mystery, also known as The Sphinx of the Ice Fields.[103] Science fiction author H. G. Wells noted, "Pym tells what a very intelligent mind could imagine about the south polar region a century ago."[104]

Like many famous artists, Poe's works have spawned innumerable imitators.[105] One interesting trend among imitators of Poe, however, has been claims by clairvoyants or psychics to be "channeling" poems from Poe's spirit. One of the most notable of these was Lizzie Doten, who in 1863 published Poems from the Inner Life, in which she claimed to have "received" new compositions by Poe's spirit. The compositions were re-workings of famous Poe poems such as "The Bells", but which reflected a new, positive outlook.[106]

Even so, Poe has not received only praise, but some criticism as well. This is partly because of the negative perception of his personal character and its influence upon his reputation.[99] William Butler Yeats was occasionally critical of Poe and once called him "vulgar".[107] Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson reacted to "The Raven" by saying, "I see nothing in it"[108] and derisively referred to Poe as "the jingle man".[109] Aldous Huxley wrote that Poe's writing "falls into vulgarity" by being "too poetical" – the equivalent of wearing a diamond ring on every finger.[110]

Physics and cosmology

Eureka: A Prose Poem, an essay written in 1848, included a cosmological theory that presaged the big bang theory by 80 years,[111] as well as the first plausible solution to Olbers' paradox.[112] Poe eschewed the scientific method in Eureka and instead wrote from pure intuition.[113] For this reason, he considered it a work of art, not science,[113] but insisted that it was still true[114] and considered it to be his career masterpiece.[115] Even so, Eureka is full of scientific errors. In particular, Poe's suggestions opposed Newtonian principles regarding the density and rotation of planets.[116]

Cryptography

Poe had a keen interest in the field of cryptography. He had placed a notice of his abilities in the Philadelphia paper Alexander's Weekly (Express) Messenger, inviting submissions of ciphers, which he proceeded to solve.[117] In July 1841, Poe had published an essay called "A Few Words on Secret Writing" in Graham's Magazine. Realizing the public interest in the topic, he wrote "The Gold-Bug" incorporating ciphers as part of the story.[118] Poe's success in cryptography relied not so much on his knowledge of that field (his method was limited to the simple substitution cryptogram), as on his knowledge of the magazine and newspaper culture. His keen analytical abilities, which were so evident in his detective stories, allowed him to see that the general public was largely ignorant of the methods by which a simple substitution cryptogram can be solved, and he used this to his advantage.[117] The sensation Poe created with his cryptography stunt played a major role in popularizing cryptograms in newspapers and magazines.[119]

Poe had an influence on cryptography beyond increasing public interest in his lifetime. William Friedman, America's foremost cryptologist, was heavily influenced by Poe.[120] Friedman's initial interest in cryptography came from reading "The Gold-Bug" as a child — interest he later put to use in deciphering Japan's PURPLE code during World War II.[121]

Poe in popular culture

Poe as a character

Main articles: Edgar Allan Poe in popular culture and Edgar Allan Poe in television and film

The historical Edgar Allan Poe has appeared as a fictionalized character, often representing the "mad genius" or "tormented artist" and exploiting his personal struggles.[122] Many such depictions also blend in with characters from his stories, suggesting Poe and his characters share identities.[123] Often, fictional depictions of Poe use his mystery-solving skills in such novels as The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl.[124]

Preserved homes, landmarks, and museums

The Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia is one of several preserved former residences of Poe

No childhood home of Poe is still standing, including the Allan family's Moldavia estate. The oldest standing home in Richmond, the Old Stone House, is in use as the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, though Poe never lived there. The collection includes many items Poe used during his time with the Allan family and also features several rare first printings of Poe works. The dorm room Poe is believed to have used while studying at the University of Virginia in 1826 is preserved and available for visits. Its upkeep is now overseen by a group of students and staff known as the Raven Society.[125]

The earliest surviving home in which Poe lived is in Baltimore, preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum. Poe is believed to have lived in the home at the age of 23 when he first lived with Maria Clemm and Virginia (as well as his grandmother and possibly his brother William Henry Leonard Poe).[126] It is open to the public and is also the home of the Edgar Allan Poe Society. Of the several homes that Poe, his wife Virginia, and his mother-in-law Maria rented in Philadelphia, only the last house has survived. The Spring Garden home, where the author lived in 1843–1844, is today preserved by the National Park Service as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site.[127] Poe's final home is preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in the Bronx, New York.[59]

Other Poe landmarks include a building in the Upper West Side, where Poe temporarily lived when he first moved to New York. A plaque suggests that Poe wrote "The Raven" here. In Boston, a plaque hangs near the building where Poe was born once stood. Believed to have been located at 62 Carver Street (now Charles Street), the plaque is possibly in an incorrect location.[128][129] The bar in which legend says Poe was last seen drinking before his death still stands in Fells Point in Baltimore, Maryland. Now known as The Horse You Came In On, local lore insists that a ghost they call "Edgar" haunts the rooms above.[130]

Poe Toaster

Main article: Poe Toaster

Adding to the mystery surrounding Poe's death, an unknown visitor affectionately referred to as the "Poe Toaster" has paid homage to Poe's grave every year since 1949. As the tradition has been carried on for more than 50 years, it is likely that the "Poe Toaster" is actually several individuals; however, the tribute is always the same. Every January 19, in the early hours of the morning, the person makes a toast of cognac to Poe's original grave marker and leaves three roses. Members of the Edgar Allan Poe Society in Baltimore have helped in protecting this tradition for decades. On August 15, 2007, Sam Porpora, a former historian at the Westminster Church in Baltimore where Poe is buried, claimed that he had started the tradition in the 1960s. Porpora said the claim that the tradition began in 1949 was a hoax in order to raise money and enhance the profile of the church. His story has not been confirmed,[131] and some details he has given to the press have been pointed out as factually inaccurate.[132]

Selected list of works

Main article: Bibliography of Edgar Allan Poe

Tales

Poetry

Other works

See also

PoeCorbeau.png Edgar Allan Poe portal

Notes

  1. ^ Stableford, Brian. "Science fiction before the genre." The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Eds. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. 18–19.
  2. ^ a b Meyers, 138
  3. ^ a b Meyers, 256
  4. ^ a b Allen, Hervey. "Introduction". The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1927.
  5. ^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 65. ISBN 086576008X
  6. ^ Canada, Mark, ed. "Edgar Allan Poe Chronology". Canada's America. 1997. Retrieved on June 3, 2007.
  7. ^ Meyers, 8
  8. ^ Quinn, 61
  9. ^ a b Meyers, 9
  10. ^ Silverman, 16–18
  11. ^ Meyers, 20
  12. ^ Silverman, 27–28
  13. ^ Silverman, 29–30
  14. ^ Meyers, 21–22
  15. ^ Silverman, 32–34
  16. ^ a b Meyers, 32
  17. ^ Silverman, 41
  18. ^ Cornelius, Kay. "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe", Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Ed. Harold Bloom, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002. p. 13 ISBN 0791061736
  19. ^ Meyers, 33–34
  20. ^ Meyers, 35
  21. ^ Silverman, 43–47
  22. ^ Meyers, 38
  23. ^ Cornelius, Kay. "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe", Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Ed. Harold Bloom, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002. pp. 13–14 ISBN 0791061736
  24. ^ Sova, 5
  25. ^ Krutch, 32
  26. ^ Cornelius, Kay. "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe", Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Ed. Harold Bloom, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002. p. 14 ISBN 0791061736
  27. ^ Meyers, 54–55
  28. ^ Hecker, William J. Private Perry and Mister Poe: The West Point Poems. Louisiana State University Press, 2005. pp. 49–51
  29. ^ Meyers, 50–51
  30. ^ Hecker, William J. Private Perry and Mister Poe: The West Point Poems. Louisiana State University Press, 2005. pp. 53–54
  31. ^ Quinn, 187–188
  32. ^ Whalen, 64
  33. ^ a b Quinn, 305
  34. ^ Silverman, 247
  35. ^ Whalen, 74
  36. ^ Silverman, 99
  37. ^ Whalen, 82
  38. ^ Meyers, 139
  39. ^ Sova, 162
  40. ^ Sova, 225
  41. ^ Meyers, 73
  42. ^ Meyers, 85
  43. ^ Silverman, 124
  44. ^ Silverman, 137
  45. ^ Meyers, 113
  46. ^ Sova, 39, 99
  47. ^ Meyers, 119
  48. ^ Silverman, 159
  49. ^ Quinn, 321–322
  50. ^ Silverman, 186
  51. ^ Meyers, 144
  52. ^ Silverman, 187
  53. ^ Silverman, 188
  54. ^ Silverman, 179
  55. ^ a b Sova, 34
  56. ^ Quinn, 455
  57. ^ Hoffman, 80
  58. ^ Ostrom, John Ward. "Edgar A. Poe: His Income as Literary Entrepreneur", Poe Studies 5.1 (1982): 5
  59. ^ a b "Edgar Allan Poe Cottage". Bronx Historical Society. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071011072300/http://bronxhistoricalsociety.org/about/poecottage.html. Retrieved October 13, 2007. 
  60. ^ Weekes, Karen. "Poe's feminine ideal," The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 149. ISBN 0521797276
  61. ^ Benton, Richard P. "Friends and Enemies: Women in the Life of Edgar Allan Poe", Myths and Reality: The Mysterious Mr. Poe. Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1987. p. 19 ISBN 0961644915
  62. ^ Quinn, 628
  63. ^ Quinn, 638
  64. ^ a b Meyers, 255
  65. ^ Bramsback, Birgit (1970). "The Final Illness and Death of Edgar Allan Poe: An Attempt at Reassessment", Studia Neophilologica (University of Uppsala), XLII. p. 40
  66. ^ Silverman, 435–436
  67. ^ Silverman, 435
  68. ^ Walsh, John Evangelist (2000). Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe (Paperback ed.). New York: St. Martin's Minotaur. pp. 32–33. ISBN 0312227329. 
  69. ^ "Death Suspicion Cholera". Crimelibrary.com. http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/edgar_allan_poe/5.html. Retrieved May 9, 2008. 
  70. ^ Benitez, Dr. R. Michael, "A 39-year-old man with mental status change", Maryland Medical Journal, 45 (1996): 765–769.
  71. ^ Meyers, 259. To read Griswold's full obituary, see Edgar Allan Poe obituary at Wikisource.
  72. ^ a b Hoffman, 14
  73. ^ Quinn, 693
  74. ^ Sova, 101
  75. ^ Meyers, 263
  76. ^ Quinn, 699
  77. ^ Meyers, 64
  78. ^ a b Royot, Daniel (2002). "Poe's Humor", The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521797276. p. 57.
  79. ^ Kennedy, J. Gerald (1987). Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300037732. p. 3.
  80. ^ Koster, Donald N. (2002). "Influences of Transcendentalism on American Life and Literature", Literary Movements for Students Vol. 1. David Galens, ed. Detroit: Thompson Gale. p. 336.
  81. ^ Ljunquist, Kent (2002). "The poet as critic", The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Kevin J. Hayes, ed. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521797276 p. 15
  82. ^ Royot, Daniel. "Poe's humor," as collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Kevin J. Hayes, ed. Cambridge University Press, 2002. pp. 61–62. ISBN 0521797276
  83. ^ Ljunquist, Kent. "The poet as critic" collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Kevin J. Hayes, ed. Cambridge University Press, 2002. p. 15. ISBN 0521797276
  84. ^ Silverman, 169
  85. ^ Silverman, 88
  86. ^ Fisher, Benjamin Franklin (1993). "Poe's 'Metzengerstein': Not a Hoax", On Poe: The Best from "American Literature. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. p. 142, 149
  87. ^ Tresch, John (2002). "Extra! Extra! Poe invents science fiction!", The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Kevin J. Hayes, ed. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521797276. p. 114.
  88. ^ Whalen, 67
  89. ^ Edward Hungerford (1930). "Poe and Phrenology", American Literature Vol. 1. p. 209–31.
  90. ^ Erik Grayson (2005). "Weird Science, Weirder Unity: Phrenology and Physiognomy in Edgar Allan Poe", Mode Vol. 1 p. 56–77.
  91. ^ a b Krutch, 225
  92. ^ Kagle, Steven E. "The Corpse Within Us", Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, Ed. Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, Inc., 1990. ISBN 0961644923. p. 104
  93. ^ Poe, Edgar A.. "Tale-Writing — Nathaniel Hawthorne". Godey's Lady's Book, November 1847, pp. 252–256. http://www.eapoe.org/works/CRITICSM/GLB47HN1.HTM. Retrieved March 24, 2007. 
  94. ^ Wilbur, Richard (1967). "The House of Poe", Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, Ed. Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. p. 99
  95. ^ Jannaccone, Pasquale (translated by Peter Mitilineos) (1974). "The Aesthetics of Edgar Poe", Poe Studies Vol. 7.1. p. 3.
  96. ^ Hoffman, 76
  97. ^ Krutch, 98
  98. ^ Quinn, 432
  99. ^ a b Meyers, 258
  100. ^ Harner, Gary Wayne. "Edgar Allan Poe in France: Baudelaire's Labor of Love", Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, Ed. Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990. p. 218. ISBN 0961644923
  101. ^ Poe Encyclopedia, 103
  102. ^ Neimeyer, Mark. "Poe and Popular Culture," Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521797276 p. 206
  103. ^ Poe Encyclopedia, 364
  104. ^ Poe Encyclopedia, 372
  105. ^ Meyers, 281
  106. ^ Carlson, Eric Walter (1996). A Companion to Poe Studies. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 476. ISBN 0-313-26506-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=nMHFGbxYhEMC&pg=PA476&lpg=PA476&dq=%22lizzie+doten%22+poe&source=web&ots=73YdR-r7Gy&sig=gnW0O_qhywhhUTnIGKkZk0dIup0. 
  107. ^ Meyers, 274
  108. ^ Silverman, 265
  109. ^ "Emerson's Estimate of Poe". http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A03E5D91630E033A25753C2A9639C94659ED7CF. Retrieved March 2, 2008. 
  110. ^ Huxley, Aldous. "Vulgarity in Literature," Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, Ed. Robert Regan, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1967. p. 32
  111. ^ Rombeck, Terry. "Poe's little-known science book reprinted", Lawrence Journal-World & News. January 22, 2005
  112. ^ Smoot, George and Keay Davidson. Wrinkles in Time. Harper Perennial, Reprint edition (October 1, 1994) ISBN 0-380-72044-2
  113. ^ a b Meyers, 214
  114. ^ Silverman, 399
  115. ^ Meyers, 219
  116. ^ Sova, 82
  117. ^ a b Silverman, 152
  118. ^ Rosenheim, 2, 6
  119. ^ Friedman, William F. "Edgar Allan Poe, Cryptographer", On Poe: The Best from "American Literature". Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. p. 40–41
  120. ^ Rosenheim, 15
  121. ^ Rosenheim, 146
  122. ^ Neimeyer, Mark. "Poe and Popular Culture", The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521797276 p. 209
  123. ^ Gargano, James W. "The Question of Poe's Narrators," Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, Ed. Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. p. 165
  124. ^ Maslin, Janet (June 6, 2006). "The Poe Shadow". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/06/features/bookwed.php. Retrieved October 13, 2007. 
  125. ^ Raven Society Homepage. University of Virginia. Retrieved on December 16, 2007.
  126. ^ "The Baltimore Poe House and Museum". Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. http://www.eapoe.org/balt/poehse.htm. Retrieved October 13, 2007. 
  127. ^ Burns, Niccole (November 15, 2006). "Poe wrote most important works in Philadelphia". School of Communication — University of Miami. http://com.miami.edu/parks/philapoeauthor.htm. Retrieved October 13, 2007. 
  128. ^ Van Hoy, David C. "The Fall of the House of Edgar". The Boston Globe, February 18, 2007
  129. ^ Glenn, Joshua. The house of Poe -- mystery solved! The Boston Globe April 9, 2007
  130. ^ Lake, Matt. Weird Maryland. Sterling Publishing, New York, 2006. ISBN 1402739060 p. 195.
  131. ^ Hall, Wiley. "Poe Fan Takes Credit for Grave Legend," Associated Press, August 15, 2007.
  132. ^ Associated Press (August 15, 2007). "Man Reveals Legend of Mystery Visitor to Edgar Allan Poe's Grave". FoxNews.com. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293413,00.html. Retrieved December 15, 2007. 

References

  • Foye, Raymond (editor) (1980). The Unknown Poe (Paperback ed.). San Francisco, CA: City Lights. ISBN 0872861104. 
  • Frank, Frederick S.; Anthony Magistrale (1997). The Poe Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313277680. 
  • Hoffman, Daniel (1998). Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (Paperback ed.). Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807123218. 
  • Krutch, Joseph Wood (1926). Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 
  • Meyers, Jeffrey (1992). Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy (Paperback ed.). New York: Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0815410387. 
  • Quinn, Arthur Hobson (1941). Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.. ISBN 0801857309. 
  • Rosenheim, Shawn James (1997). The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801853326. 
  • Silverman, Kenneth (1991). Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance (Paperback ed.). New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0060923318. 
  • Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z (Paperback ed.). New York: Checkmark Books. ISBN 081604161X. 
  • Whalen, Terence (2001). "Poe and the American Publishing Industry". in J. Kennedy. A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195121503. 

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