Edgar A. Poe

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this mesmerizing chronicle of Poe's short and disorderly life (1809-1849), Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize-winning Silverman ( The Life and Times of Cotton Mather ) incorporates fresh discoveries about the poet/storyteller's travels, relationships and literary works. Poe's actress mother, deserted by her husband, died when her second son was three. He was taken in by the family of Baltimore businessman John Allan and moved with them to England for five years. Returning to Richmond, Va., Poe soon alienated Allan, who cut off support after the young man quit college and was court-martialed at West Point. After publishing Tamerlane and Other Poems in 1831, Poe was hired as a ``magazinist'' and began building his reputation as critic and writer of macabre tales. He married his consumptive 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm who, dead at 24, is memorialized in ``Annabelle Lee.'' Two years later Poe was also dead, of drink. With scholarship and narrative skill Silverman tells Poe's sad tale affectingly. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)

Library Journal

The opening of Silverman's comprehensive biography of Poe sets the tone: 24-year-old Eliza Poe, actress and mother of three, is dying. The local paper solicits funds for this destitute and deserted woman. Her son Edgar, raised but never adopted by the Allan family, thus spends his entire life mourning his losses, beseeching others for money, enduring imagined grievances, and needing to be nurtured. Quoting extensively from letters, public records, and diaries, Silverman sheds new light on how Poe's early life influenced his work. He details Poe's turbulent career as poet, short story writer, and editor traveling between Boston and Richmond and traces his literary development through bouts of alcoholism and hallucinations and disputes with literary rivals. An excellent addition to the literature that furthers understanding of America's gothic tale-teller.-- Cathy Sabol, LRC, Northern Virginia Community Coll., Manassas

School Library Journal

YA-- A comprehensive but readable biography. Poe is pictured as a man who was obsessed by the early death of his actress mother and as one who filled his writings with themes of lost love, violent murder, and the supernatural. Particularly intriguing are his relations with his contemporaries: his constant denigration of the talents of Longfellow, other literary feuds and frauds, his penchant for reporting on bogus ``news events,'' his quarrels with his editors and backers, and his bouts with alcoholism and despair. A compelling portrait. --Richard Lisker, Fairfax Public Library, VA

Kirkus Reviews

An outstanding new biography by Silverman, whose The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (1983) won a Pulitzer Prize. Poe's stature as one of the "founding fathers" of American letters is so well established that one would be hard-pressed to find anyone educated in this country without some familiarity with his work. Known primarily as a poet and storyteller, he was in fact, as Silverman details, one of the most prolific literary journalists in American history, one whose extensive body of reviews and criticism has yet to be collected fully. A key strength of Silverman's biography is that it recognizes one of the truly distinctive aspects of Poe's character—that he belonged to the first generation of professional (as opposed to amateur) writers in America—and examines both his life and his art in this light. The great tragedies of Poe's life—his miserable childhood, his doomed marriage, the alcoholism—are well known already, but Silverman is able to highlight how many aspects of Poe's despair were the simple outgrowth of his vocation: the constant uprootings, the grinding poverty, the overexertions and tensions of the literary hack. The exegesis of Poe's writing is intelligent, realistic, and relates in a believable way to the circumstances of the writer's life. Moreover, Silverman's meticulous appendices and notes should prove invaluable to future scholars. A remarkable success: the first major biography of Poe in over 50 years, written with careful skill and great style. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)