| A Dream Within a Dream: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe Contributor(s): Barnes, Nigel (Author) |
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ISBN: 0720613221 ISBN-13: 9780720613223 Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers OUR PRICE: $21.56 Product Type: Paperback Published: January 2009 Annotation: Edgar Allan Poe's work has always been a force to be reckoned with, and his influence still casts long shadows through the literary imagination. Poe's life-long habit of correspondence with friends and family, detractors and critics, has been collected and published previously in a two-volume academic edition. But Nigel Barnes' new biography is the first to incorporate a generous selection of the letters in such a way that they tell much of his story and help illuminate the shadowy corners of Poe's life that have hitherto been shrouded in mystery and legend. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures - Biography & Autobiography | Historical |
| Dewey: 818.309 |
| Physical Information: 1.1" H x 5.4" W x 8.4" (0.90 lbs) 360 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 160 years after his death, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the most polarizing and mysterious figures in American literature. Hailed as a genius and condemned as a mentally unstable alcoholic often in the same breath the genre pioneer has received a considerable amount of less-than-kind attention from biographers. Taking a far more sympathetic approach, this meticulously researched account draws on public records, previous biographies, an exhaustive list of rare periodicals, and an impressive catalog of correspondence between Poe and numerous relatives and associates. The account reconstructs Poe from his dire beginnings, born to two struggling actors, to his tragic end, dying alone at age 40. Barnes's scholarly style is ponderous and slow at times, but he offers one of the most complete and fair portraits of Poe yet written. He spends much time defending and excusing Poe's more outre behavior-binging, marrying his 15-year-old cousin, locking himself away for days at a time but also reframing it by jettisoning the hyperbolic Poe caricature popular in the public imagination: drunk, insane, perverted, and overrated." |