Edgar allan poe book collection
Definitely one of the shortest quickest but most fulfilling biographies of Poe I ve ever read If you don t want to get into a ton of detail and the supposed symbolism behind every piece of Poe s writing this is the book for you Great start to finish with a ton of follow up reading listed some of which now sit on my TBR My first five star read of 2018 Poe EdgarAllanPoe EAPoe EAP 144 A very good elegantly written short biography of Poe with a good balance of attention to his life character and work Includes a good bibliography further reading section Would definitely recommend to those interested in a fair charitable short account of Poe s life but don t want to do a deep dive into one of the longer scholarly biographies 144 This is a very thorough biography of Poe in spite of how slim a volume it is. Edgar allan poe pdf collection The book goes through Poe s life with good references towards his works It provides a compelling view of Poe s struggle with both alcohol and his need to be respected and heard There is some literary criticism throughout which rounds out the volume I left it knowing far about Poe than I went in knowing and indeed wanting to know a fair bit There was less attention afforded to Griswold than I expected there to be Griswold being the man left in charge of Poe s works and estate after his death and who largely defamed Poe s name rather than managed his work but that was explained away as having been dealt with heartily in other volumes. Edgar allan poe epub All in all this book serves as a very accessible introduction to Poe s life and work It made me miss reading Poe and seemed altogether a fine sort of read so near to Poe s birthday I d recommend it readily although I do want to read biographies of him that perhaps would lean a bit heavily on primary source material This book does have a nice bibliography in the back for just such purposes 144 Concise accessible and insightful this short biography of Edgar Allan Poe is an excellent introduction to the man and his work Well researched readable and entertaining I very much enjoyed it 144 Great palette cleanser after a terrible book I just read Love Poe s work and really enjoy reading about his life though lived tragically gave us detective fiction one of my favorite genres Collins clearly did his homework and it shows in his clear writing Wonderful read 144 Looming large in the popular imagination as a serious poet and lively drunk who died in penury Edgar Allan Poe was also the most celebrated and notorious writer of his day He died broke and alone at the age of forty but not before he had written some of the greatest works in the English language from the chilling The Tell Tale Heart to The Murders in the Rue Morgue the first modern detective story to the iconic poem The Raven Poe s life was one of unremitting hardship His father abandoned the family and his mother died when he was three Poe was thrown out of West Point and married his beloved thirteen year old cousin who died of tuberculosis at twenty four He was so poor that he burned furniture to stay warm He was a scourge to other poets but so to himself. Edgar allan poe books the raven In the hands of Paul Collins one of our liveliest historians this mysteriously conflicted figure emerges as a genius both driven and undone by his artistic ambitions Collins illuminates Poe s huge successes and greatest flop a 143 page prose poem titled Eureka and even tracks down what may be Poe s first published fiction long hidden under an enigmatic byline Clear eyed and sympathetic Edgar Allan Poe is a spellbinding story about the man once hailed as the Shakespeare of America Edgar Allan Poe The Fever Called LivingFor those interested in a brief and well written biography of the man author Paul Collins Edgar Allan Poe The Fever Called Living is a perfect place to start At less than 120 pages including a few pages of Notes and recommendations for additional reading the book s five engaging chapters fly by quickly By his own admission this book adds little unusual or even unique material to the subject of Poe s often calamitous life and his strange death but that s no discredit to Collins as one of America s most beloved authors and the widely acknowledged inventor of the modern detective story there s already a voluminous trove of scholarly information available about Poe and his work However any reader keener to wade rather than drown in Poe s murky pool will be glad for Collins book 144 He was at all times a dreamer dwelling in ideal realms in heaven or hell peopled with creatures and the accidents of his brain Rev Rufus Griswold quoted in Edgar Allan Poe The Fever Called LivingA solid introduction biography of Edgar All n Poe I ve been fascinated with Poe since being a kid in Utah and later Virginia and a young adult in Richmond I adore his short stories like his poetry and have mostly lazily avoided his other writings Perhaps it is time to try to read all of his stuff Collins does a solid job of tracing the life and literary history of Poe I was fascinated by his relationship with other authors and editors Collins does a good job of placing Poe in his time but not burying Poe in his age 144 Edgar Allan Poe by the time he wrote down the phrase The fever called Living in his poem For Annie 1849 was impoverished in poor health and desperately lonely two years after the death of his beloved wife Virginia The forty year old poet was also though he could not have known it in his last year of life by the end of 1849 he would die under mysterious circumstances and from unknown causes in a Balti hospital How fitting then that Paul Collins has taken the phrase The Fever Called Living and made it the subtitle of this brief Poe biography. Edgar allan poe book collection Edgar Allan Poe The Fever Called Living at only 107 pages of text is brief by design Collins s book is part of the Icons series of concise biographies published by New Harvest an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books published in the series so far include biographies of Jesus of Nazareth Joseph Stalin Lucian Freud J. Edgar allan poe texts It is fortunate and striking considering the book s status as part of a series called Icons that Collins a professor of English at Portland State University takes the reader s focus away from Poe as icon and invites the reader to concentrate on Poe as a hard working writer This theme is emphasized right from the book s beginning Collins opens with the familiar though now lapsed tradition of the Poe Toaster s annual late night visits to Poe s Balti grave on the anniversary of Poe s birth But then Collins encourages us to ignore the colorful manifestations of EAP fan culture embodied by the Poe Toaster and instead watch the Balti Sun reporter taking notes from the perimeter There and not amid the weathered tombstones is the reality of the living and working writer Poe s reputation was not earned through tragedy but in spite of it he was a careful craftsman of words and a man whose deep dedication to understanding art is often obscured by the drama around his life p 1. Edgar allan poe book of poems I like that focus and emphasis Widespread awareness of the difficult circumstances of Poe s life has no doubt done much to give Poe his well iconic status as an embodiment of the Romantic artist whose bleeding heart beats on through one tragedy after another But Poe was a writer first and foremost and one who produced some of the greatest American literature in a variety of genres under the most difficult circumstances imaginable That part of Poe s story is inspiring. Edgar allan poe books Considering the brevity of Edgar Allan Poe The Fever Called Living it is doubly impressive that Collins provides persuasive explanations for a number of the mysteries surrounding Poe s life When for example Collins considers biographers puzzlement at the odd scenario of Poe s foster father John Allan sending the young Poe to the University of Virginia without sufficient funds to study there Collins suggests that It is hardly a mystery to any first generation student John Allan was an immigrant who never attended college what he understood was business secondary schools and the occasional tutor fee. Edgar allan poe kindle books free Of the time and money necessary for college and its cultivation of sheer intellectual curiosity he was ignorant p 13 It is a sensible explanation and that freshness of perspective marks many parts of this biography as when Collins looking at Poe s time as an enlisted man in the United States Army suggests that the U. Book edgar allan poe best Collins takes particular care in tracing the development of Poe s literary art Poe s early prose Collins suggests while following the sensationalist literary norms of his time still lacked a compelling narrator In particular a charismatic manic first person presence was needed to bring alive Poe s use of dread and terrified sensation because though Poe could mock the form of sensationalism he hadn t learned how to transcend it p 25 In contrast by the time of Poe s failed verse drama Politian 1835 the young writer was learning from his prior mistakes With his genius at haunting narrators and an emerging commitment to plot structure Poe now was growing closer to a mastery of his art p 31. Edgar allan poe historical fiction As mentioned above Collins concentrates well on the practicalities of Poe s life as a working author Knowing the vagaries of a writing life the book is dedicated to Dave Eggers who gave me my first break as a writer Collins looks at how Poe s life choices affected his career When it comes to Poe s penchant for writing often savage reviews of the work of fellow authors for instance Collins writes that The careers of the author and the reviewer mix with deceptive and dangerous ease Reviews are quick but paltry money distracting from the work that makes a writer s reputation they are transient in their effect on readers but lasting in their damage to a writer s professional relations p 34 Similarly aspiring writers who think they will make their first mark in short stories before going on to write The Great American Novel might benefit from Collins s somber advice in the context of publishers repeated rejections of Poe s proposals of a volume of his short stories that authors receive precisely the same rejections from publishers even today Short fiction sells poorly and is an extravagance barely tolerated even in established writers p 35 So get back to work on that novel alright As any Poe biographer should do Collins recognizes Poe s singular achievements Aptly Collins describes Poe s 1841 short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue the world s first true mystery story in the modern sense as initiating the world s most popular genre of fiction and therefore as literally the most influential short story of the nineteenth century p 49 And his later tale of ratiocination The Purloined Letter 1844 featuring as it did the same detective character of C Auguste Dupin arguably went even further in placing deductive analysis and problem solving at the center of the mystery story The Purloined Letter illustrates how the appeal of the mystery genre lies not in bloodshed or violence but rather in the bringing of order to disorder and causality to the seemingly inexplicable pp 59 60. Edgar allan poe pdf the black cat Edgar Allan Poe The Fever Called Living is as mentioned above brief indeed I would hazard a surmise that authors writing for the Icons series are told very strictly what the word limit for books in this series is But Collins tells Poe s sad and compelling story in a concise and effective manner Edgar Allan Poe may have conquered the fever called Living in 1849 but the literature he wrote has transcended the passage of time 144 I bought this on a whim I think it was one of those 1. Edgar allan poe historical site 99 Kindle specials that show up in my email It is an ultra short biography the actual text being only 108 pages followed by some Notes Collins writing style is immensely readable being as much fiction like as perhaps Erik Larson though admittedly without Larson s exciting story The only Poe I ve read is his The Murders in the Rue Morgue The Dupin Tales It is a master of narrative voice and above all the creation of the detective story that made Poe an author that Lincoln and the world at large placed beside Shakespeare The character and works of Poe have ever been held in reverence by the metaphysical minds of the Scottish universities reported one newspaper in 1875 It was the fall of that year that the University of Edinburgh enrolled a young Arthur Conan Doyle In Poe s tales of Dupin the medical student found the artistic catalyst for his training in physical observation and diagnosis The result was one of the great literary creations of his time Sherlock Holmes. Edgar allan poe science and technology But Poe was himself such a sad man After his wife Virginia died he was at a complete loss He had always had bouts of drunkenness which he called his illness and when the love of his life was gone it got even worse The next couple of years were the worst years of his alcoholism. Edgar allan poe annabel lee The hallucinations may have been delirium tremens for at forty Poe s body was finally beginning to rebel When he turned up a week later at the door of his fellow gothic novelist George Lippard he was in even worse shape wandering penniless through a local cholera epidemic starving and wearing only one shoe Poe collapsed into a corner of Lippard s office his head in his hands. Edgar allan poe definition of poetry Collins has some other titles that look interesting and though I might not read any Poe I hope to find myself in front of another book by Paul Collins 144 As with other historical authors of note there have been so many different biographies and books written about the life and times of Edgar Allan Poe Yet as I am a curious sort I tend to read every one that I can get my hands on Previously to this one I found myself quite disappointed with the vast majority of them Most of the time this was for two main reasons which I shall note later in this review This book delighted and surprised me This author took a different approach Rather than treating this man as though he were a villain or a hero he instead took a much appreciated far neutral approach In this particular book Paul Collins did not treat Poe as if he were some rare anomaly but rather discussed the hardships and high points of Poe s life I think this is the first work of non fiction about Poe life that I actually felt like he was being portrayed as human in No parlour tricks no illusions that he was something dark and macabre to be feared Just a man on a streak of bad luck and bad decisions I was impressed by the author s meticulous research and that he seemed to hit most of the valid and important parts of Poe s personal life and career from the beginning Unlike many other biographies on the man this book did not centrally focus on the publication of the Raven nor the drinking habit which the author later became synonymous with His actions are debated somewhat here and there but are not put under a 21st century microscope of morality I like it when the author can allow a story especially in non fiction to tell itself with little interference in the way of the author s personal interjections This is not a long book but has than just the simple basic Poe info in it If you are a fan of Edgar Allan Poe or just curious about a man who led an intriguing life of poverty and moderate success then this would be a good book for you to choose Recommended This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through Netgalley All opinions are my own 144
Paul Collins is a writer specializing in history memoir and unusual antiquarian literature His ten books have been translated into a dozen languages and include Sixpence House Lost in a Town of Books 2003 and The Murder of the Century The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars 2011 He lives in Oregon where he is Chair and Professor of English at Portland State University,
Detective story edgar allan poe D Salinger Vincent Van Gogh Alfred Hitchcock Hannah Arendt Paul of Tarsus David Lynch Benazir Bhutto and of course Edgar Allan Poe truly an eclectic list of icons.
Edgar allan poe history channel S Army has the distinction of being the only institution to steadily support and appreciate the talents of Edgar Allan Poe while he was still alive p 20..
