Edgar Allan Poe's life (1809-1849) was Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, original, dark, dazzling, satirical, inventive - in short, an ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Concise, dramatic and immensely readable, this is an essential and idiosyncratic addition to Ackroyd's canon of brilliant biographies.
Peter Ackroyd has written biographies of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake, Thomas More and Shakespeare, as well as short lives of Chaucer, Turner and Newton. A bestselling biographer, historian, novelist and broadcaster, he holds a CBE for services to literature. He was born and brought up in London, where he still lives. Chatto and Vintage are the publishers of his bestselling London- The Biography and Thames- Sacred River. His future books will be Venice and The English Ghost, as well as new volumes about London, to be published in hardback by Chatto and in paperback by Vintage.
Poe has a bicentennial, too. From prolific novelist/biographer Ackroyd (e.g., Chaucer, Shakespeare, London). Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Noted author Ackroyd (The Thames) adds to his one-man Brief Lives series this exploration of the short-and predominantly miserable-life of Edgar Allan Poe. Bringing his novelist's skills to bear, Ackroyd opens with Poe's mysterious death in 1849: "Like his narratives and his fables, Poe's own story ends abruptly and inconclusively...." Born in Boston in 1809 to traveling actors and orphaned in 1811, Poe was adopted by Richmond, Va., merchant John Allan. Their relationship soured, and Poe left for a rocky academic career at the University of Virginia and a stint at West Point, and in 1836 he married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia. Despite critical acclaim for his work-from 1839's "The Fall of the House of Usher" to his famous 1845 poem, "The Raven"-Poe constantly struggled with alcoholism and poverty, alienating almost everyone he met. At age 40, Poe was discovered dying in a Baltimore tavern; his whereabouts for the previous week remain unknown. But Ackroyd never demonizes the melancholic man who influenced writers as diverse as Jules Verne and James Joyce, and his readable account should appeal to Poe devotees and newcomers alike. Illus. (Jan. 20) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
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