Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend

More than a century and a half after his death Edgar Allan Poe still remains a controversial figure, the one American literary giant of the nineteenth century about whom not only the estimate of his work, but also the very facts of his life remain in dispute. Poe has been seen variously as demon or saint, a literary dilettante or the great precursor of twentieth-century literature. Poe was all these and more, and it is the greatest virtue of Edward Wagenknecht’s study that he presents Poe in a new in all his complexity, but with his strengths and weaknesses judiciously balanced. As in his earlier studies of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving, Wagenknecht looks at primary sources – the writer’s own literary work and his writings, the accounts of people who knew him – and secondary material written after his death. It is notable that Wagenknecht dismisses many of the slanders which have clung to Poe’s image, and he corrects wrong impressions which have been drawn from the facts of Poe’s life. Poe’s character emerges in a more sympathetic light, and the relation between his life and his work becomes clearer and more significant. As a literary critic Professor Wagenknecht probes into the nature of Poe’s career as poet, fiction writer, and essayist, but he interests himself much more in how Poe’s writing reflected his personality and nature. He also pays close attention to Poe’s religious and philosophical writings and draws significant conclusions as to their place in his literary output and its relation to his life. 'Highly recommended' Boston Globe Edward Wagenknecht (1900-2004) was a prolific writer of books about literary and other celebrated figures of British and American culture. His subjects included Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Marilyn Monroe and John Milton.