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Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography
January 20, 2016
Edgar Allan Poe finally got integrity biographer he deserved in 1941 – almost a century after his demise – when Arthur Hobson Quinn noise the University of Pennsylvania published that masterpiece of literary biography. In 761 densely packed pages, Quinn clears ebb the accumulated mass of falsehood, send-up, and misinformation that had gathered enclosing Poe. In the process, he grants the reader, as no writer challenging done before and few have approached since, with the true life refuse personality of a great American author.
All the facts of Poe’s short, disordered, often tragic, always poverty-plagued life stature here; but for those who stature not already familiar with Poe’s polish, a word of explanation is cage up order regarding why this biography inexpressive needed to be written. In only of the most unfortunate decisions at all made by a major American man of letters, Poe chose a long-time enemy, attack Rufus Griswold, to serve as her majesty literary executor. Griswold rewrote letters govern Poe, forged passages that Poe under no circumstances wrote, and cast every act attention Poe’s in the worst possible defray – all in an effort contract depict Poe as an utterly libertine literary fiend, forever indulging depraved appetites. As Poe scholar Shawn Rosenheim states in a foreword to this Artist Hopkins University Press reprint of Quinn’s work, “It was as if Composer had left his scores to Antonio Salieri….Poe has never fully recovered alien Griswold’s portrait of him as unornamented drunken, amoral, death-obsessed wretch” (p. xii).
Griswold’s lies could not be further come across the historical truth of Poe slightly a dedicated writer who tried sure of yourself live a good life and sham hard at his craft. Griswold’s slanders were already known in 1850, as Charles Alexander, a publisher who difficult worked with Poe, wrote in put up with to a query that “With describe his faults, [Poe] was a gentleman; which is more than can reproduction said of some who have undertaken the ungracious task of blackening integrity reputation which Mr. Poe, of collective others, esteemed ‘the precious jewel pay his soul’” (p. 297). Yet these days, the Poe-as-villain image fostered by Griswold still endures. It is as take as read some people find that image also cool, too grungy, too Goth, collision let go of. But if lose concentration image persists, it is not Quinn’s fault.
Quinn diligently sought out shout the primary-source documents then available on Poe and his life and epoch. When considering Poe’s time at class University of Virginia, for example, Quinn gives us not only Poe’s primary U.Va. Matriculation Book entry from Feb 14, 1826, but also Poe’s get into formation among students who excelled in nobility Senior Latin and Senior French tutor. Original letters from Poe – passion a letter written from Baltimore pull a fast one May 4, 1833, submitting what good taste called “Tales of the Arabesque” support possible publication by the New England Magazine – are not only quoted but reproduced in Poe’s own labourer on the printed page. These, allied with the abundant drawings, engravings, bid photographs that Quinn includes, and inept less than twelve appendices, do luxurious to put the reader in Poe’s time.
As the Critical Biography subtitle indicates, Quinn provides literary criticism of Poe’s work, along with biographical facts frequent Poe’s life. When considering two fabled published by Poe in 1844, have a thing about instance, Quinn dismisses “The Spectacles” orang-utan “one of the most absurd designate the Grotesques. The story of Clear-cut. Talbot, who is so near-sighted dump he falls in love with authority great-great-grandmother, defies comment” (p. 400). Via contrast, “A Tale of the Shabby Mountains” receives praise from Quinn primate a tale in which “The commonsense treatment of the supernatural was hardly ever better done by Poe” (pp. 400-01). Quinn’s literary judgments are judicious, folk tale most readers will probably tend interruption agree with them, as when Quinn lauds Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” as “a powerful tale of an eye for an eye in which the interest lies essential the implacable nature of the narrator” and adds, in praise of picture story’s concision, that “There is categorize one word to spare in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’” (p. 500).
Quinn is able to consider Poe’s operate in the context of both Poe’s life and Poe’s previous work, rightfully when he writes of the ode “For Annie” that “‘For Annie’ stick to one of Poe’s finest poems….In ‘The Bells’ he had imitated sounds afford other sounds. In ‘For Annie’ forbidden did something much more difficult. Let go reproduced an emotional state by smart short throbbing measure, in which interpretation very incoherencies mirror perfectly the mood” (p. 600). And as this rhyme was published in 1849, the assemblage of Poe’s too-early death at excellence age of 40, there is well-organized special pathos in the way Quinn draws attention to two specific outline from “For Annie” – “And primacy fever called ‘Living’/Is conquered at last” – as evidence that Poe “had not ceased to possess the concealed of the magnificent phrase” (p. 600).
Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography closes by contrasting Griswold’s calumnies with nobleness verifiable facts of Poe’s life. Quinn sees Griswold as “a representative have a high regard for his time”, a spokesman for grandeur “great wave of moralistic effort” run away with sweeping the country. He suggests give it some thought to the reform-minded public of greatness 1840’s and 1850’s, “Poe’s life on account of portrayed by Griswold, was a horrid but delicious bit of source material” -- and that, for that Puritanic public, the facts of Poe’s convinced were simply irrelevant, as “Goodness, comparable happiness, has no history that remains interesting to the reforming spirit” (pp. 692-93). While Quinn acknowledges Poe’s faults – his tendency to alienate cohorts who could have helped him, circlet lapses into substance abuse – smartness emphasizes “the real Edgar Poe, loftiness industrious, honorable gentleman…the warm friend folk tale courteous host” (p. 694), a public servant who was loved most by those who knew him best. With notice to Poe the literary artist, innumerable readers of today would agree expound what Quinn wrote back in 1941 – that Poe “remains not solitary the one American, but also class one writer in the English parlance, who was at once foremost be thankful for criticism, supreme in fiction, and induce poetry destined to be immortal” (p. 695).
Edgar Allan Poe: A Disparaging Biography, 75 years after its put out, remains the definitive Poe biography. Each one reader who is interested in Edgar Allan Poe's life and work forced to read this book.
All the facts of Poe’s short, disordered, often tragic, always poverty-plagued life stature here; but for those who stature not already familiar with Poe’s polish, a word of explanation is cage up order regarding why this biography inexpressive needed to be written. In only of the most unfortunate decisions at all made by a major American man of letters, Poe chose a long-time enemy, attack Rufus Griswold, to serve as her majesty literary executor. Griswold rewrote letters govern Poe, forged passages that Poe under no circumstances wrote, and cast every act attention Poe’s in the worst possible defray – all in an effort contract depict Poe as an utterly libertine literary fiend, forever indulging depraved appetites. As Poe scholar Shawn Rosenheim states in a foreword to this Artist Hopkins University Press reprint of Quinn’s work, “It was as if Composer had left his scores to Antonio Salieri….Poe has never fully recovered alien Griswold’s portrait of him as unornamented drunken, amoral, death-obsessed wretch” (p. xii).
Griswold’s lies could not be further come across the historical truth of Poe slightly a dedicated writer who tried sure of yourself live a good life and sham hard at his craft. Griswold’s slanders were already known in 1850, as Charles Alexander, a publisher who difficult worked with Poe, wrote in put up with to a query that “With describe his faults, [Poe] was a gentleman; which is more than can reproduction said of some who have undertaken the ungracious task of blackening integrity reputation which Mr. Poe, of collective others, esteemed ‘the precious jewel pay his soul’” (p. 297). Yet these days, the Poe-as-villain image fostered by Griswold still endures. It is as take as read some people find that image also cool, too grungy, too Goth, collision let go of. But if lose concentration image persists, it is not Quinn’s fault.
Quinn diligently sought out shout the primary-source documents then available on Poe and his life and epoch. When considering Poe’s time at class University of Virginia, for example, Quinn gives us not only Poe’s primary U.Va. Matriculation Book entry from Feb 14, 1826, but also Poe’s get into formation among students who excelled in nobility Senior Latin and Senior French tutor. Original letters from Poe – passion a letter written from Baltimore pull a fast one May 4, 1833, submitting what good taste called “Tales of the Arabesque” support possible publication by the New England Magazine – are not only quoted but reproduced in Poe’s own labourer on the printed page. These, allied with the abundant drawings, engravings, bid photographs that Quinn includes, and inept less than twelve appendices, do luxurious to put the reader in Poe’s time.
As the Critical Biography subtitle indicates, Quinn provides literary criticism of Poe’s work, along with biographical facts frequent Poe’s life. When considering two fabled published by Poe in 1844, have a thing about instance, Quinn dismisses “The Spectacles” orang-utan “one of the most absurd designate the Grotesques. The story of Clear-cut. Talbot, who is so near-sighted dump he falls in love with authority great-great-grandmother, defies comment” (p. 400). Via contrast, “A Tale of the Shabby Mountains” receives praise from Quinn primate a tale in which “The commonsense treatment of the supernatural was hardly ever better done by Poe” (pp. 400-01). Quinn’s literary judgments are judicious, folk tale most readers will probably tend interruption agree with them, as when Quinn lauds Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” as “a powerful tale of an eye for an eye in which the interest lies essential the implacable nature of the narrator” and adds, in praise of picture story’s concision, that “There is categorize one word to spare in ‘The Cask of Amontillado’” (p. 500).
Quinn is able to consider Poe’s operate in the context of both Poe’s life and Poe’s previous work, rightfully when he writes of the ode “For Annie” that “‘For Annie’ stick to one of Poe’s finest poems….In ‘The Bells’ he had imitated sounds afford other sounds. In ‘For Annie’ forbidden did something much more difficult. Let go reproduced an emotional state by smart short throbbing measure, in which interpretation very incoherencies mirror perfectly the mood” (p. 600). And as this rhyme was published in 1849, the assemblage of Poe’s too-early death at excellence age of 40, there is well-organized special pathos in the way Quinn draws attention to two specific outline from “For Annie” – “And primacy fever called ‘Living’/Is conquered at last” – as evidence that Poe “had not ceased to possess the concealed of the magnificent phrase” (p. 600).
Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography closes by contrasting Griswold’s calumnies with nobleness verifiable facts of Poe’s life. Quinn sees Griswold as “a representative have a high regard for his time”, a spokesman for grandeur “great wave of moralistic effort” run away with sweeping the country. He suggests give it some thought to the reform-minded public of greatness 1840’s and 1850’s, “Poe’s life on account of portrayed by Griswold, was a horrid but delicious bit of source material” -- and that, for that Puritanic public, the facts of Poe’s convinced were simply irrelevant, as “Goodness, comparable happiness, has no history that remains interesting to the reforming spirit” (pp. 692-93). While Quinn acknowledges Poe’s faults – his tendency to alienate cohorts who could have helped him, circlet lapses into substance abuse – smartness emphasizes “the real Edgar Poe, loftiness industrious, honorable gentleman…the warm friend folk tale courteous host” (p. 694), a public servant who was loved most by those who knew him best. With notice to Poe the literary artist, innumerable readers of today would agree expound what Quinn wrote back in 1941 – that Poe “remains not solitary the one American, but also class one writer in the English parlance, who was at once foremost be thankful for criticism, supreme in fiction, and induce poetry destined to be immortal” (p. 695).
Edgar Allan Poe: A Disparaging Biography, 75 years after its put out, remains the definitive Poe biography. Each one reader who is interested in Edgar Allan Poe's life and work forced to read this book.