Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), son of itinerant actors, holds a secure place in the firmament of history as America's first master of suspense. Displaying scant interest in native scenes or materials, Edgar Allan Poe seems the most un-American of American writers during the era of literary nationalism; yet he was at the same time a pragmatic magazinist, fully engaged in popular culture and intensely concerned with the "republic of letters" in the United States. This Historical Guide contains an introduction that considers the tensions between Poe's "otherworldly" settings and his historically marked representations of violence, as well as a capsule biography situating Poe in his historical context. The subsequent essays in this book cover such topics as Poe and the American Publishing Industry, Poe's Sensationalism, his relationships to gender constructions, and Poe and American Privacy. The volume also includes a bibliographic essay, a chronology of Poe's life, a bibliography, illustrations, and an index.

Explores historical and biographical details of the writer's life, as well as the unexpected dimensions of his accomplishments and influence.

No American author of the early 19th century enjoys a larger international audience than Edgar Allan Poe. Widely translated, read, and studied, he occupies an iconic place in global culture. Such acclaim would have gratified Poe, who deliberately wrote for "the world at large" and mocked the provincialism of strictly nationalistic themes. Partly for this reason, early literary historians cast Poe as an outsider, regarding his dark fantasies as extraneous to American life and experience. Only in the 20th century did Poe finally gain a prominent place in the national canon. Changing critical approaches have deepened our understanding of Poe's complexity and revealed an author who defies easy classification. New models of interpretation have excited fresh debates about his essential genius, his subversive imagination, his cultural insight, and his ultimate impact, urging an expansive reconsideration of his literary achievement. Edited by leading experts J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples, this volume presents a sweeping reexamination of Poe's work. Forty-five distinguished scholars address Poe's troubled life and checkered career as a "magazinist," his poetry and prose, and his reviews, essays, opinions, and marginalia. The chapters provide fresh insights into Poe's lasting impact on subsequent literature, music, art, comics, and film and illuminate his radical conception of the universe, science, and the human mind. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking, this Handbook reveals a thoroughly modern Poe, whose timeless fables of peril and loss will continue to attract new generations of readers and scholars.

The genius and orphan son of itinerant actors, Poe led a tragic life and suffered greatly—as much at his own hands as those of Fate. Yet tragedy never stopped him from writing: poems, short stories, literary journalism, and even creating a new genre, the detective story—a contribution so great that the most prestigious writing award for crime fiction, given annually by the Mystery Writers of America, bears his name. The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe is a fascinating guide to the tormented genius, with critical insight into: His difficult childhood His 13-year-old bride The truth about his drug use The enduring mystery of his death Poe led a life as epic as one of his poems. In The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe, you’ll learn all the deepest secrets that haunted this tortured writer, influenced his writing, and ultimately drove him to an early death.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote his great works while living in several cities on the East Coast of the United States, but Baltimore's claim to him is special. His ancestors settled in the burgeoning town on the Chesapeake during the 18th century, and it was in Baltimore that he found refuge when his foster family in Virginia shut him out. Most importantly, it was here that he was first paid for his literary work. If Baltimore discovered Poe, it also has the inglorious honor of being the place that destroyed him. On October 7, 1849, he died in this city, then known as "Mob Town." Edgar Allan Poe's Baltimore is the first book to explore the poet's life in this port city and in the quaint little house on Amity Street, where he once wrote.

The Portable Edgar Allan Poe compiles Poe's greatest writings: tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge, murder, and mystery, including "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the world's first detective story. In addition, this volume offers letters, articles, criticism, visionary poetry, and a selection of random "opinions" on fancy and the imagination, music and poetry, intuition and sundry other topics. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.