Edgar Allan Poe

The Fever Called Living

by Paul Collins

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Pub Date Aug 26 2014 | Archive Date Sep 26 2014

HMH New Harvest | New Harvest

Biographies & Memoirs

Description

Today the name Edgar Allan Poe invokes a tragic genius whose mastery of horror seems inexorably tied to his tormented life. But in his own time, Poe was above all a craftsman—an editor and reviewer desperately trying to earn a living by transmuting the wild ephemera of early Victorianism into innovations in science fiction, horror, and detective literature. Indeed, the crime thriller would not exist without Poe’s sleuth Dupin, the deductive genius of “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.”

With brilliant scholarship and storytelling verve, Paul Collins delves into Poe’s life and his professional world, from his stormy relationship with his rich adoptive father and interest in cryptograms to hits such as “The Raven” and flops like Eureka, his late-career crank literature outing. Edgar Allan Poe is an informative and supremely entertaining account of one of the most singular talents in American letters.