Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

by George E. Woodberry

Edgar Allan Poe, author, poet, literary critic and editor, was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents, Elizabeth Arnold and David Poe, were both actors who separated shortly after his birth.

By the age of 2, Edgar was alone and semi-destitute with his siblings Henry and Rosalie – David remained an absent father and Elizabeth died tragically from tuberculosis, alone on a straw bed while her children looked on helplessly.

This uncertainty and instability were patterns that continued throughout Poe’s life, mimicked in his art. Catastrophe, insanity, excess, dereliction and depression would haunt him whilst informing the psychological horror of his wildly popular tales and poems of horror and mystery, including ‘The Fall of the House of the Usher’, ‘The Raven’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.

Poe heralded a new interpretation of the Gothic form in American fiction and his genius and artistic prowess remain iconic. Yet his extraordinary life has frequently been the subject of conflicting, doubtful and contested information.

Carefully documenting one of the most flawed, troubled and fascinating figures in literary history, a man of letters, philosophy, art and science, Woodberry presents a rare and in-depth account of Poe’s family background.

Including personal correspondence and private notes, this is an elegant and mesmerising biography documenting Poe’s greatest eccentricities, achievements, affairs and sorrows.

George Edward Woodberry (1855-1930) was an American literary critic and poet. Born in Massachusetts, he studied at Harvard University. His other titles include the biographies Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Swinburne.

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