Product Description

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most prolific American writers of all time. The genius son of itinerant actors who died young and left him an orphan, Poe suffered greatly - as much at his own hands as those of Fate. Yet tragedy never stopped him from writing: poems, short stories, literary journalism. He created an entire genre - the detective story - a contribution so great that the most prestigious writing award for crime fiction, given each year by the Mystery Writers of America, bears his name.Poe's unique storytelling makes him one of the most popular "literary writers"; he's the one author students don't need to be encouraged to read in literature classes the world over. His cult following continues to grow; today, there are thousands of literary societies, fan clubs and web sites devoted to him and his work. And he's captured the imagination of countless writers and filmmakers.Poe led a life as epic as one of his poems. In "The Everything Edgar Allan Poe Book", readers will learn all the deepest secrets that haunted this tortured writer - and ultimately drove him to an early death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #474131 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
Veteran writer and professor Shelly Costa Bloomfield teaches writing and literature at the Cleveland Institute of Art. A noted scholar of suspense and mystery fiction, Dr. Bloomfield has also published several short stories in that genre herself. She earned her doctorate in English at Case Western Reserve University - with a dissertation called The Brief and Crowded Hour; Studies in Narrative Suspense in the Work of Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and James. Dr. Costa lives in Ohio.

Customer Reviews

It depends what you want....
The style of this book is choppy and fragmented, making it difficult to follow Poe's life-story unless you know the facts beforehand. For example, reading about his attempts to meet and marry another woman without being told that his wife had died at that point gave a distorted impression. I found the headlines on each page and the boxes with quotes and "facts" very off-putting. The facts boxes suggested that the other information wasn't true, although I'm sure this wasn't the writer's intention. I suspect that the writer was trying to create a more newspaper-like style that the reader could dip in and out of. Yet personally I didn't like it - if you're trying to write an essay/paper on Poe then the Cambridge Companion is a much better book, absorbing and engrossing. I came away from this book distrusting the information within it which is a pity and unsure of the author's legitimacy for telling the story which was probably unfair.