Synopses & Reviews
Looming large in the popular imagination as a serious poet and lively drunk who died in penury, Edgar Allan Poe was also the most celebrated and notorious writer of his day. He died broke and alone at the age of forty, but not before he had written some of the greatest works in the English language, from the chilling “The Tell-Tale Heart” to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”—the first modern detective story—to the iconic poem “The Raven.”
Poes life was one of unremitting hardship. His father abandoned the family, and his mother died when he was three. Poe was thrown out of West Point, and married his beloved thirteen-year-old cousin, who died of tuberculosis at twenty-four. He was so poor that he burned furniture to stay warm. He was a scourge to other poets, but more so to himself.
In the hands of Paul Collins, one of our liveliest historians, this mysteriously conflicted figure emerges as a genius both driven and undone by his artistic ambitions. Collins illuminates Poes huge successes and greatest flop (a 143-page prose poem titled Eureka), and even tracks down what may be Poes first published fiction, long hidden under an enigmatic byline. Clear-eyed and sympathetic, Edgar Allan Poe is a spellbinding story about the man once hailed as “the Shakespeare of America.”
Review
“Ackroyd…makes the reader want to re-read Poe, and indeed to read more of Ackroyd on Poe.” Scotland on Sunday
Synopsis
A fascinating new biography of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) — sure to be another bestselling biography for Peter Ackroyd.
Poe's life was Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, original, dark, dazzling, satirical and inventive — in short, an ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. In fact, Ackroyd's biography of Poe opens with his end, his final days — no one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steamboat to Baltimore and his discovery six days later dying in a tavern. This mystery sets the scene for a short life packed with drama and tragedy (drink and poverty) combined with extraordinary brilliance. Tennyson described him as the most original genius that America has produced.
Poe has been claimed as the forerunner of modern fantasy, and credited with the invention of psychological dramas (long before Freud), science fiction (before H.G. Wells and Jules Verne) and the detective story (before Arthur Conan Doyle). He influenced European romanticism and was the harbinger of both Symbolism and Surrealism. Peter Ackroyd claims that Poe found his family among writers — writers not only of his time but of the future generations who were influenced by the power of his imagination.
Synopsis
Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of Americas greatest and most versatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poe wrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; invented the first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works of science fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, and themes had a tremendous impact on European romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism, and continue to influence writers today.
In this essential addition to his canon of acclaimed biographies, Peter Ackroyd explores Poes literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poes difficult childhood, his bumpy academic and military careers, and his complex relationships with women, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin. He describes Poes much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections to Poes childhood and the trials, as well as the triumphs, of his adult life. Ackroyds thoughtful, perceptive examinations of some of Poes most famous works shed new light on these classics and on the troubled and brilliant genius who created them.
Synopsis
A view into the tumultuous and creative life of Edgar Allan Poe.
Synopsis
Today the name Edgar Allan Poe invokes a tragic genius whose mastery of horror seems inexorably tied to his tormented life. But in his own time, Poe was above all a craftsman—an editor and reviewer desperately trying to earn a living by transmuting the wild ephemera of early Victorianism into innovations in science fiction, horror, and detective literature. Indeed, the crime thriller would not exist without Poes sleuth Dupin, the deductive genius of “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.”
With brilliant scholarship and storytelling verve, Paul Collins delves into Poes life and his professional world, from his stormy relationship with his rich adoptive father and interest in cryptograms to hits such as “The Raven” and flops like Eureka, his late-career crank literature outing. Edgar Allan Poe is an informative and supremely entertaining account of one of the most singular talents in American letters.
About the Author
Peter Ackroyd is the biographer of William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More, and the author of the bestselling London: The Biography. The subject of his previous Brief Life was Isaac Newton. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award (jointly) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and is the holder of a CBE for services to literature. He is the author of Thames: The Biography. His novels include The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Hawksmoor (Guardian Fiction Prize), Chatterton (short-listed for the Booker Prize) and most recently The Fall of Troy. He lives in London.
Table of Contents
1. The Child of Fortune 1
2. Manuscript Found in a Bottle 19
3. The Glorious Prospect 40
4. The Shakespeare of America 61
5. Nevermore 84
Notes 108
Selected Further Reading 114
Acknowledgments 117