Marginalia

by Edgar Allan Poe

The first edition of this book to reprint all seventeen installments exactly as he published them; taken from the magazines in which it appeared, this first complete and correct edition reveals an hitherto unknown side of Poe. Clean, unmarked and tight in a Brodart jacket cover.

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics

235 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1836

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Nikos Tsentemeidis]

Πολλές από τις κριτικές του Poe δυσκολεύτηκα να τις παρακολουθήσω ή δεν τις κατάλαβα, κυρίως γιατί αναφερόταν σε σύγχρονους του, παντελώς άγνωστους σε μένα τουλάχιστον. Το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι θαύμασα την ευρυμάθεια του και την οξύτητα του πνεύματός του.

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

More interesting and entertaining than I anticipated. It;s a bit like reading Poe's Goodreads reviews at times. Many books authors lost to time and I definitely disagree with him on Petrarch and a few other fine points of literature. Still, the closest you will come to having a coffee with him and talking books.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Baudelaire (French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and one of the first translators of Edgar Allan Poe ) claimed that Poe's Marginalia ". . . are the secret chambers, as it were, of his mind . . . Aristocrat by nature more than by birth, the Virginian, the Southerner, the Byron gone astray in a bad world has always kept his philosophic impassibility and, whether he defines the nose of the mob, whether he mocks the fabricators of religions. whether he scoffs at libraries, he remains what the true poet was, and always will be,—a truth clothed in a strange manner, an apparent paradox, who does not wish to be elbowed by the crowd . . ." Baudelaire, Charles. (1952). Baudelaire on Poe; critical papers, Translated by Lois Hyslop and Francis E. Hyslop, Jr. (Eds.). State College, Pa.: Bald Eagle Press. (125)

[Waldo Parra · Rating 4 out of 5]

En Marginalia se recopilan las notas que Edgar Alan Poe realizaba en los márgenes de sus libros. Desde crítica literaria hasta conclusiones sobre cuentos, novela y poesía. Resulta llamativa la extensión de algunas "marginalias" que fácilmente podrían ser considerados pequeños ensayos sobre el plagio o el teatro.

La mordacidad de la crítica de Poe, que cuestiona desde los títulos elegidos hasta la gramática de los textos (si, Poe era un nazi gramatical) se extiende hasta incluso cuestionar la inteligencia de ciertos autores y su capacidad creativa.

Varios de los textos de este libro son irónicos y graciosos, aprovechando quizás lo íntimo de los márgenes, por ende Marginalia es un libro necesario para conocer de primera mano otras facetas de Poe, más allá del estereotipo melancólico y triste en el que frecuentemente ha sido catalogado.

[Giorgi Komakhidze · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.”

[Maria Bunin · Rating 4 out of 5]

plan de domingo: leer a poe hablando de sus cosas 🐧

ayer le puse nombre a esto que hago con las libretas y los libros de escribir absolutamente todo lo que pienso y siento, y descubrí que poe, entre otros autores, también se dedicaba a hacer eso en los márgenes de libros – que escogía bajo el criterio de que tuviesen un margen ancho para poder anotar en ellos.

por un lado, se puede leer al modo didáctico, como un manual de /su/ literatura. Poe tenía una forma muy particular de escribir y sobre todo de narrar, así que es muy interesante ver qué opinaba sobre cómo otras personas usan la rima, la gramática o las paradojas porque te ayuda a dar mucho contexto a su obra a través de otras obras que leía.

por otra parte es como leer un diario super personal lleno de anécdotas, si te lo imaginas como en ese fragmento donde cuenta que estaba aburrido una tarde de lluvia y "being in a mood too listless for continuous study, I sought relief from ennui in dipping here and there among the volumes of my library," (lo que he hecho yo esta tarde, vaya). Y esa es mi parte favorita, me gusta leer que en todas las épocas nos preocupan las mismas cosas, y que podemos encontrar refugio en cosas parecidas, y que al final contar las cosas es una necesidad para ti misme pero también un puente entre las personas (como una ligadura entre dos grafemas).

[Favio Zúñiga soto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rayar libros es toda una odisea cuando le pones empeño, y veo que Poe se lo toma como una forma de vida, de ocupar el objeto para impregnarle su visión, a veces criticarlo, a veces sólo comentarlo, a veces hacer todo un postulado sobre el plagio o la traducción del francés al inglés que requiere un toque mayor que sólo ir por palabras ya que el tono dice algo totalmente distinto. Es sin duda interesante, pero no atrapante a cada página, así que más bien sugeriría agarrarlo por partes, quizás por grupos, seleccionar una que otra cosa de interés. Yo al menos marqué y marginalié un par de cosas, así que, bueno, con eso estoy bien.

[Lilly B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would - a lot of it requires an awful lot of context so some of it went over my head with names of contemporary writers etc, but I think the main reason I liked this was cause Poe is SO savage in his criticism. Also he is so opinionated about literary theory and grammar etc which is quite funny to read since I find his prose incredibly clunky lmaooo

[Karlis Alejandra Ch' · Rating 3 out of 5]

Qué lindo es leer las notas de tus autores preferidos. Eso es Marginalia

[Cristina Vega · Rating 2 out of 5]

Como dicen las dos estrellas "it was ok".