Synopses & Reviews
Edgar Allan Poe's works, with their gothic and often obsessive themes, have had a significant influence on American literature. In this Norton Critical Edition, G. R. Thompson has fully introduced, annotated, and edited each text.
"Backgrounds and Contexts" includes fifty-seven carefully chosen documents that illuminate Poe's prolific but short career, among them reviews, prefaces, and correspondence by Poe as well as thematic pieces dealing with Transcendentalism and alternative romanticism, sciences of the mind, sensation fiction, and the South and slavery.
Fourteen judiciously selected critical essays address Poe's poetry, fiction, politics, and psychology. Contributors include Floyd Stovall, Robert C. McLean, Richard Wilbur, James W. Gargano, Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Paul John Eakin, Grace Farrell, Liahna Klenman Babener, Barton Levi St. Armand, Joseph N. Riddel, J. Gerald Kennedy, John Carlos Rowe, Terence Whalen, and John T. Irwin.
A Selected Bibliography is also included.
About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.
Book News Annotation:
Thompson (English and comparative literature, Purdue U.) relies on
Poe's original works as they were first published, solving the
problem of Poe's rewriting habit. Among his selections Thompson
includes poems, tales and sketches, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym and passages from Eureka: An Essay in the Material and Spiritual
Universe. His background and contextual material includes significant
letters, contemporary criticism and "A Reviewer Reviewed," Poe's hoax
review of himself that was found in his own handwriting shortly after
his death. Thompson chooses 14 of the most significant critical
essays on Poe from the 3,000 or so currently extant, including
passages from Moldenhauer, Eakin, Irwin, Stocall, McLean, and Wilbur
and commentaries on Poe's essays on slavery.
Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Synopsis:
Edgar Allan Poe's works, with their gothic and often obsessive themes, have had a significant influence on American literature. In this Norton Critical Edition, G. R. Thompson has fully introduced, annotated, and edited each text. Backgrounds and Contexts includes fifty-seven carefully chosen documents that illuminate Poe's prolific but short career, among them reviews, prefaces, and correspondence by Poe as well as thematic pieces dealing with Transcendentalism and alternative romanticism, sciences of the mind, sensation fiction, and the South and slavery. Fourteen judiciously selected critical essays address Poe's poetry, fiction, politics, and psychology. Contributors include Floyd Stovall, Robert C. McLean, Richard Wilbur, James W. Gargano, Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Paul John Eakin, Grace Farrell, Liahna Klenman Babener, Barton Levi St. Armand, Joseph N. Riddel, J. Gerald Kennedy, John Carlos Rowe, Terence Whalen, and John T. Irwin. A Selected Bibliography is also included.
About the Author
G. R. Thompson is Professor of English at Purdue University. He has published several studies of Edgar Allan Poe, including Poe's Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales, Essays and Reviews of Edgar Allan Poe, Romantic Arabesque, Contemporary Theory, and Postmodernism and the Library of America edition of Poe's Essays and Reviews.
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