Renowned as the creator of the detective story and a master of horror, the author of "The Red Mask of Death," "The Black Cat," and "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe seems to have derived his success from suffering and to have suffered from his success. "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" have been read as signs of his personal obsessions, and "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Descent into the Maelstrom" as symptoms of his own mental collapse. Biographers have seldom resisted the opportunities to confuse the pathologies in the stories with the events in Poe's life. Against this tide of fancy, guesses, and amateur psychologizing, Arthur Hobson Quinn's biography devotes itself meticulously to facts. Based on exhaustive research in the Poe family archive, Quinn extracts the life from the legend, and describes how they both were distorted by prior biographies. "

For a century and a half Edgar Allan Poe has remained one of the most controversial and enigmatic figures in American literature. No other author has been subject to so much misconception; the "real Poe" has been all too dimly perceived, obscured by rumors and innuendoes about his alcoholism, ill-fated love affairs, and poverty. The Poe Log is the first complete and reliable chronicle of his tragic life and brilliant literary career. Extracting facts and clues from a fascinating array of documents, reminiscences, newspaper reports, legal records, and letters to, from, or about Poe, Messrs. Thomas and Jackson have created a vibrant reconstruction of Poe's personal and professional life. The resulting text is remarkable for both its detail and its clarity. The broad outlines of Poe biography were sketched over a century ago; The Poe Log provides the fine strokes and details that complete the unfinished picture, endowing it with depth, verisimilitude, and meaning.

This biography of Edgar Allan Poe, a giant of American Literature who invented both the horror and detective genre, is a portrait of extremes: a disinherited heir, a brilliant but underpaid author, a temperate man and uncontrollable addict.

Struggling to support her family in mid-19th-century New York, writer Frances Osgood makes an unexpected connection with literary master Edgar Allan Poe and finds her survival complicated by her intense attraction to the writer and the scheming manipulations of his wife.

A view into the tumultuous and creative life of Edgar Allan Poe.

Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s 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 Poe’s literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poe’s 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 Poe’s much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections to Poe’s childhood and the trials, as well as the triumphs, of his adult life. Ackroyd’s thoughtful, perceptive examinations of some of Poe’s most famous works shed new light on these classics and on the troubled and brilliant genius who created them.