Edgar A. Poe: A Biography: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance

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Harper Collins, Nov 4, 1992 - Biography & Autobiography - 592 pages
From a Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer, the most revealing, fascinating, and important biography of one of our greatest literary figures.

From inside the book

Contents

Attempted Recovery Ulalume Eureka Parting
332
Benefit Street
355
An Exchange of Letters Return to Lowell
363
Suicide Attempt Conditional Engagement
373
Lyceum Lecture Marriage Announced and Called Off Repercus
384
New Attempts to Resume a Literary Career The Bells Hop
394
New Revival of the Stylus Final Trip to Lowell Journey to
407
Richmond
419

Break with Burton The Penn Magazine
155
Resignation from Grahams F W Thomas Virginias Illness
174
Reputation after Leaving Grahams Charles Dickens and En
195
Rufus Griswold Last Days in Philadelphia
211
Poes Crisis Attack on Longfellow The Raven
231
23
244
Poes Condition The Lyceum War
257
Ownership and Loss of the Broadway Journal
271
Other Writing and Editions in 1845 The
293
The Libel Suit The Cask of Amontillado
312
Old Point Comfort Norfolk Richmond Death and
429
Muddy
437
NOTES
449
38
455
with John Allan
461
John Allan
467
99
492
APPENDICES
523
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
537
Copyright

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Page 402 - But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we — Of many far wiser than we — And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea , Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee...
Page 166 - In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design.
Page 402 - Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
Page 337 - Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber — This misty mid region of Weir: — Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber — This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." Said we, then — the two, then — "Ah, can it Have been that the woodlandish ghouls — The pitiful, the merciful ghouls, To bar up our way and to ban it From the secret that lies in these wolds — From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds — Have drawn up the spectre of a planet From the limbo of lunary souls — This sinfully...
Page 405 - There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind...
Page 297 - Of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?" Death, was the obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" From what I have already explained at some length the answer here also is obvious— "When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world...
Page 138 - But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn! — for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

About the author (1992)

Kenneth Silverman is a professor of English, a graduate advisor in American Civilization, co-director of The Biography Seminar at New York University, and an amateur magician. He lives in New York City.

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