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Edgar Allan Poe : his life and legacy

by Meyers, Jeffrey.

Format: Print Book 1992
Availability: Available at 1 Library 1 of 1 copy

Available (1)
Location Collection Call #
C.C. Mellor Memorial Library Non Fiction 92 Poe
Location  C.C. Mellor Memorial Library
 
Collection  Non Fiction
 
Call Number  92 Poe
 
 

Summary
This biography of Edgar Allan Poe, a giant of American literature who invented both the horror and detective genres, is a portrait of extremes: a disinherited heir, a brilliant but underpaid author, a temperate man and uncontrollable addict. This book offers a penetrating look at a writer whose life was stranger and more appalling than his most eccentric fiction.

"Poe has found a biographer fully worthy of his strange and erratic genius and his no less strange and erratic life".

Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "An accomplished biographer of the literati, including Hemingway, Lawrence, and Conrad, Meyers now turns his acute perceptions to Poe, "the strangest and saddest figure in American literature." The short story "Tell-Tale Heart" and the poem "The Raven" are read by most schoolchildren; of course, Meyers casts his net wider, to draw parallels with insight and style between Poe's eminently difficult life and his body of decidedly strange work. Poe's self-destructive personality stained not only his relationships but also his manuscripts; the nature of his fiction and poetry can be traced back to the nature of his traumatic upbringing and to his addiction to alcohol. Concluding chapters chart the fall and rise in Poe's literary reputation in the decades following his death, and discuss his influence on later writers. ~--Brad Hooper"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Meyers ( Joseph Conrad ) focuses on the ways the works of poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) influenced many other great writers, including Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Nabokov and Baudelaire. Hailed in France as the inventor of the modern detective and psychological novel and of symbolist poetry, he is remembered in his own country chiefly for his macabre tales (``The Pit and the Pendulum,'' ``The Fall of the House of Usher'') and his poem ``The Raven.'' Meyers documents Poe's short and unhappy life, effectively describing his chaotic childhood (he was raised by a foster father who would later disown him) and his tragic adult life (he struggled to write while suffering from alcoholism, poverty and the death of his young wife Virginia in 1847 from consumption). Meyers's sympathetic and readable treatment highlights Poe's considerable stylistic achievements. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects Poe, Edgar Allan, -- 1809-1849.
Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography.
Publisher New York : Toronto : New York :Charles Scribner's Sons ;1992
Collier Macmillan Canada ;
Maxwell Macmillan International,
Language English
Description xii, 348 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography Notes Includes bibliographical references (pages [335]-337) and index.
ISBN 0684193701 :
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