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Ackroyd's Brief Lives #4
Poe: A Life Cut Short
Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s greatest and most versatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poe wrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; invented the first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works of science fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, and themes had a tremendous impact on European romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism, and continue to influence writers today. In this essential addition to his canon of acclaimed biographies, Peter Ackroyd explores Poe’s literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poe’s difficult childhood, his bumpy academic and military careers, and his complex relationships with women, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin. He describes Poe’s much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections to Poe’s childhood and the trials, as well as the triumphs, of his adult life. Ackroyd’s thoughtful, perceptive examinations of some of Poe’s most famous works shed new light on these classics and on the troubled and brilliant genius who created them.
226 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
49 people are currently reading
971 people want to read
About the author
Peter Ackroyd
184 books1,497 followersPeter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 196 reviews
February 24, 2020
Me partió el corazón leer ésto. No sabía de la vida de Poe más que aquello casi todos los años me toca estudiar para el profesorado; esos conocimientos muy por encima, vieron, los del estilo Poe escribió ésto porque de chiquito murió su madre o esta frase refiere a la muerte de su esposa; en fin, hechos muy al voleo, y demás análisis de sus poesías y cuentos. Nada en profundidad.
Este libro fue un comienzo para conocer al Poe de carne y hueso, al borracho, al apasionado por la muerte; aquél que, aparentemente, saboteaba las pocas posibilidades de trabajo estable y triunfo por botellas de lo que fuera.
Es una biografía bastante simple. Tiene un comienzo chocante, con el relato paso a paso de los últimos días de Poe, logra atrapar desde un princpio.
Llegando al final (lo mejor de esta biografía) los hechos son dolorosos, se relata brevemente la decadencia del escritor en voces ajenas; sus muchas fábulas en las propias, cada testimonio construye a un Poe mentiroso, arrogante, siempre de negro, de ojos tristes, y de más noches que la luna: la soledad, el alcoholismo, la muerte temprana de Virginia, la miseria total... todo es casi insoportable. Un gran escritor que murió la muerte más patética posible.
El autor cuenta todo sin ahondar demasiado en detalles. Es recién en los últimos capítulos donde logra un efecto fatal: puede emocionar (y se me cayeron un par de lágrimas, es inevitable con lo llorona que soy) contando cómo, si bien Poe no logró el reconocimiento que tanto lo desesperaba en vida, ni la familia, ni la madre, ni el amor incondicional que creía necesitar, sí encontró una verdadera familia después de la muerte...lo que hace que, creo yo, toda su existencia sea aún más deprimente.
Como bien dice Ackroyd:
The orphan, in the end, found his true family
y la encontró en los escritores que vinieron después, en todos aquellos a quienes inspiró: Arthur Conan Doyle, Baudelaire, HG Wells, James Joyce, Nietzsche, Kafka, y muchos más (y P.A. no lo menciona, pero Stephen King le debe muchísimo a Poe! ¡Y ni hablar de cómo Cortazar lo admiraba!)
¡Qué hermandad literaria que se perdió! Me rompe el corazón.
(Aunque probablemente, de haber vivido muchos años más, seguramente se hubiese peleado con todos los escritores del siglo XIX que brillaron en esos años. El pobre era muy inseguro, arrogante y medio envidioso...al menos según lo que se cuenta en este libro.)
Reseña también disponible en La loca de los libros.
Este libro fue un comienzo para conocer al Poe de carne y hueso, al borracho, al apasionado por la muerte; aquél que, aparentemente, saboteaba las pocas posibilidades de trabajo estable y triunfo por botellas de lo que fuera.
Es una biografía bastante simple. Tiene un comienzo chocante, con el relato paso a paso de los últimos días de Poe, logra atrapar desde un princpio.
Llegando al final (lo mejor de esta biografía) los hechos son dolorosos, se relata brevemente la decadencia del escritor en voces ajenas; sus muchas fábulas en las propias, cada testimonio construye a un Poe mentiroso, arrogante, siempre de negro, de ojos tristes, y de más noches que la luna: la soledad, el alcoholismo, la muerte temprana de Virginia, la miseria total... todo es casi insoportable. Un gran escritor que murió la muerte más patética posible.
El autor cuenta todo sin ahondar demasiado en detalles. Es recién en los últimos capítulos donde logra un efecto fatal: puede emocionar (y se me cayeron un par de lágrimas, es inevitable con lo llorona que soy) contando cómo, si bien Poe no logró el reconocimiento que tanto lo desesperaba en vida, ni la familia, ni la madre, ni el amor incondicional que creía necesitar, sí encontró una verdadera familia después de la muerte...lo que hace que, creo yo, toda su existencia sea aún más deprimente.
Como bien dice Ackroyd:
The orphan, in the end, found his true family
y la encontró en los escritores que vinieron después, en todos aquellos a quienes inspiró: Arthur Conan Doyle, Baudelaire, HG Wells, James Joyce, Nietzsche, Kafka, y muchos más (y P.A. no lo menciona, pero Stephen King le debe muchísimo a Poe! ¡Y ni hablar de cómo Cortazar lo admiraba!)
¡Qué hermandad literaria que se perdió! Me rompe el corazón.
(Aunque probablemente, de haber vivido muchos años más, seguramente se hubiese peleado con todos los escritores del siglo XIX que brillaron en esos años. El pobre era muy inseguro, arrogante y medio envidioso...al menos según lo que se cuenta en este libro.)
Reseña también disponible en La loca de los libros.
February 2, 2020
Não digas nada nessa solidão
Que não é solidão, porque então
Os espíritos dos mortos que em vida
Surgiram diante de ti novamente estão
Na morte que te rodeia, e a sua vontade
Acabarás por se ter sobrepor: não te movas.
Edgar Allan Poe
Uma boa biografia sobre a obra e a curta vida de Edgar Allan Poe, um homem desolado, lúgubre, órfão, com o pressentimento que jamais seria feliz à superfície da terra, conforme comprova o excerto do poema acima mencionado.
Uma vida tristíssima pautada pela orfandade, o alcoolismo, a pobreza e a grande ambição de sucesso imediato. Raramente sorria, vestia sempre de preto e nunca se sentia em casa em parte nenhuma.
Uma biografia bem escrita e organizada, mas também um manual de introdução e sistematização da obra de Poe.
Uma vida misteriosa como grande parte dos seus escritos.
Uma vida curta, um talento enorme.
A obsessão pela morte nos seus escritos, mas também o percursor , através dos seus “contos de raciocínio”, de detectives tão diversos como Sherlock Holmes ou o Padre Brown, famosos “raciocinadores”.
Foi admirado por Fiodor Dostoievski, Joseph Conrad e James Joyce, que distinguiu nele as sementes da literatura moderna. No final, o órfão acabou por encontrar a sua verdadeira família (leia-se literária).
Acreditem, vale a pena ler! E o biógrafo não se esqueceu de inventariar as principais publicações de Poe, nem de mencionar a bibliografia .
De fácil consulta, um livro para ter sempre à mão quando lemos a obra de Poe.
Que não é solidão, porque então
Os espíritos dos mortos que em vida
Surgiram diante de ti novamente estão
Na morte que te rodeia, e a sua vontade
Acabarás por se ter sobrepor: não te movas.
Edgar Allan Poe
Uma boa biografia sobre a obra e a curta vida de Edgar Allan Poe, um homem desolado, lúgubre, órfão, com o pressentimento que jamais seria feliz à superfície da terra, conforme comprova o excerto do poema acima mencionado.
Uma vida tristíssima pautada pela orfandade, o alcoolismo, a pobreza e a grande ambição de sucesso imediato. Raramente sorria, vestia sempre de preto e nunca se sentia em casa em parte nenhuma.
Uma biografia bem escrita e organizada, mas também um manual de introdução e sistematização da obra de Poe.
Uma vida misteriosa como grande parte dos seus escritos.
Uma vida curta, um talento enorme.
A obsessão pela morte nos seus escritos, mas também o percursor , através dos seus “contos de raciocínio”, de detectives tão diversos como Sherlock Holmes ou o Padre Brown, famosos “raciocinadores”.
Foi admirado por Fiodor Dostoievski, Joseph Conrad e James Joyce, que distinguiu nele as sementes da literatura moderna. No final, o órfão acabou por encontrar a sua verdadeira família (leia-se literária).
Acreditem, vale a pena ler! E o biógrafo não se esqueceu de inventariar as principais publicações de Poe, nem de mencionar a bibliografia .
De fácil consulta, um livro para ter sempre à mão quando lemos a obra de Poe.
November 3, 2016
Esta é a segunda biografia da autoria de Peter Ackroyd que leio (anteriormente li a de Shakespeare) e fica provado que Ackroyd é um autor fadado a escrever biografias “impossíveis”.
Não sendo deslumbrante, é eficaz na forma como monta o puzzle da vida de Edgar Allan Poe que, tal como a de Shakespeare (apesar de num nível diverso), tem várias e profundas lacunas que deixam muito espaço à especulação.
Vida atormentada, destino sombrio, compromisso com a desilusão, bipolaridade, miséria extrema… Poe era um predestinado que não conheceu o brilho da sua estrela em vida.
Susan Talley adicionou um post-scriptum a este encontro pleno de alegria. ‘Ele foi o último da festa a sair da nossa casa. Nós estávamos no alpendre, e, depois de avançar alguns passos, deteve-se, virou-se e voltou a levantar o chapéu, num último adieu. Nesse exacto momento, um meteorito brilhante surgiu no céu directamente sobre a sua cabeça, e desapareceu para leste.
Não sendo deslumbrante, é eficaz na forma como monta o puzzle da vida de Edgar Allan Poe que, tal como a de Shakespeare (apesar de num nível diverso), tem várias e profundas lacunas que deixam muito espaço à especulação.
Vida atormentada, destino sombrio, compromisso com a desilusão, bipolaridade, miséria extrema… Poe era um predestinado que não conheceu o brilho da sua estrela em vida.
Susan Talley adicionou um post-scriptum a este encontro pleno de alegria. ‘Ele foi o último da festa a sair da nossa casa. Nós estávamos no alpendre, e, depois de avançar alguns passos, deteve-se, virou-se e voltou a levantar o chapéu, num último adieu. Nesse exacto momento, um meteorito brilhante surgiu no céu directamente sobre a sua cabeça, e desapareceu para leste.
February 2, 2022
Poe’s life was as short as it was unhappy, and therefore it seems eminently appropriate that biographer Peter Ackroyd has given this concise biography of Edgar Allan Poe the subtitle A Life Cut Short. While this biography may not provide any particularly novel insights for the serious student of Poe’s life and work, it is a suitable introduction for a reader who is closer to the beginning of their consideration of Poe’s place in American and world literature.
Ackroyd, a prolific British novelist, has also written biographies of a variety of writers, including Chaucer, More, Shakespeare, Blake, Dickens, Pound, and Eliot. It seems understandable, therefore, that he turned to Poe as a subject, as part of a series called “Ackroyd’s Brief Lives.” And brief this biography is, at 192 pages, not counting bibliography, index, and notes.
Ackroyd starts off in medias res, with an account of the mysterious circumstances of Poe’s death. The author, en route from Richmond to New York City, stopped off in Baltimore – and then disappeared for five days, before being found, drunk and ill, in a Baltimore tavern. Hospitalized and delirious, Poe died four days after he was found. Ackroyd aptly remarks that, as with Poe’s fiction, “Poe’s own story ends abruptly and inconclusively; it is bedevilled by a mystery that has never been, and probably can never be, resolved” (p. 5). While there have been valiant attempts to solve the mystery of Poe’s five-day disappearance – John Evangelist Walsh’s Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe (2000) is a good example – Ackroyd’s grim assessment is probably correct.
From that beginning, Ackroyd goes back to the beginning of Poe’s life – a life that sometimes seemed to contain as many bizarre or outré elements as any of Poe's stories. The orphaned son of actors, at a time when acting was an anything-but-respectable profession, he was brought up as a foster child within an affluent Richmond family, but ended up being cut off without a cent. He attended two of the best institutions of higher education in the U.S.A. – the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York – but left both without completing the course of study. Enlisting as an ordinary soldier, Poe excelled at fulfilling military routine, but he later worked to get himself kicked out of the Army.
And when he began his career as a journalist, he found that he gained the greatest degree of attention when he wrote fiction that “is all very strident and colourful, and of course not to be taken seriously – except for the fact that its purpose was to thrill and to surprise a large audience of somewhat credulous readers. This was the central paradox of Poe’s literary career” (pp. 57-58). Just as paradoxical was the fact that, while Poe’s editorial work for journals like the Southern Literary Messenger invariably resulted in increased circulation and publicity for said journals, Poe himself “was always desperately poor” (p. 56).
Students who are familiar with Poe’s life story will generally find Ackroyd’s conclusions regarding Poe’s character and personality sound, as when Ackroyd reflects on Poe’s 1843 visit to Washington, D.C.. In the Nation’s Capital as part of a campaign to secure a federal clerkship, Poe turned to drink, as was his wont, and his D.C. visit turned into a disaster. Of Poe’s misbehaviour on that occasion, Ackroyd writes that Poe “had a deep sense of pride, as well as an instinctive sense of formality and control. When these were abrogated and injured, he fell into sickness and grief. His illnesses were caused not by physical overindulgence but by guilty self-laceration” (p. 104).
At the same time, I was struck by the way Ackroyd focuses on Poe’s failings and weaknesses. Characteristic in that regard is Ackroyd’s remark that “In the extant photographs [of Poe] there was some contrast or disjunction between the right and left sides of the face, with slight but noticeable differences in the eye and mouth, brow and chin. One side was weaker than the other” (p. 109). If some Poe biographers, like Arthur Hobson Quinn, perhaps err in the direction of sympathizing with Poe, Ackroyd sometimes seems to err in the other direction.
Yet a consideration of the tragic circumstances of the death of Poe’s young wife Virginia does seem to inspire some sympathy from Ackroyd. Describing the desolate state of mental breakdown into which Poe fell after Virginia’s death in 1847, Ackroyd relates this tragedy to the theme of loss throughout Poe’s life, writing that “From his earliest life [Poe] harboured within himself an emptiness – a yearning for consolation and love and protection. And at the same time, he was lost in the world” (pp. 157-58).
This biography is so short that consideration of Poe’s literature and its impact sometimes seems to get lost amidst the undeniably vivid circumstances and events of Poe’s life. Fortunately, however, there are passages where Ackroyd writes thoughtfully about some of Poe’s best-known poems and stories. Ackroyd describes “The Raven” (1845) as “the poem that is a reverie and a lament, a threnody and a hymn, with its cadences so melodious and powerful that they still haunt the American poetic imagination. And there is, too, the plangency of the continual refrain of ‘Nevermore’” (p. 120).
Ackroyd’s remarks on the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) are comparably perceptive: “It has become one of the classics of the short story, or, rather, of the prose poem. It is one of the reasons why Poe was venerated as a master by writers as diverse as Baudelaire and Maeterlinck. It is a story of unnameable perversities in a house of the mind, a place not of this Earth. It is a setting for blood and darkness and mystery” (pp. 82-83).
This short biography works best for readers who are new to the study of Poe’s life and work. Like Paul Collins’s Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living (2014), it provides a quick and accessible look at the facts of Poe’s life. Readers who want something more in-depth might want to look to biographies like Jeffrey Meyers’s Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy (1992), Kenneth Silverman’s Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance (1991), and particularly Arthur Hobson Quinn’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (1941), a work that remains the gold standard in Poe biography. Ackroyd’s Poe: A Life Cut Short can provide the beginning Poe student with a good first step toward those larger works.
Ackroyd, a prolific British novelist, has also written biographies of a variety of writers, including Chaucer, More, Shakespeare, Blake, Dickens, Pound, and Eliot. It seems understandable, therefore, that he turned to Poe as a subject, as part of a series called “Ackroyd’s Brief Lives.” And brief this biography is, at 192 pages, not counting bibliography, index, and notes.
Ackroyd starts off in medias res, with an account of the mysterious circumstances of Poe’s death. The author, en route from Richmond to New York City, stopped off in Baltimore – and then disappeared for five days, before being found, drunk and ill, in a Baltimore tavern. Hospitalized and delirious, Poe died four days after he was found. Ackroyd aptly remarks that, as with Poe’s fiction, “Poe’s own story ends abruptly and inconclusively; it is bedevilled by a mystery that has never been, and probably can never be, resolved” (p. 5). While there have been valiant attempts to solve the mystery of Poe’s five-day disappearance – John Evangelist Walsh’s Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe (2000) is a good example – Ackroyd’s grim assessment is probably correct.
From that beginning, Ackroyd goes back to the beginning of Poe’s life – a life that sometimes seemed to contain as many bizarre or outré elements as any of Poe's stories. The orphaned son of actors, at a time when acting was an anything-but-respectable profession, he was brought up as a foster child within an affluent Richmond family, but ended up being cut off without a cent. He attended two of the best institutions of higher education in the U.S.A. – the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York – but left both without completing the course of study. Enlisting as an ordinary soldier, Poe excelled at fulfilling military routine, but he later worked to get himself kicked out of the Army.
And when he began his career as a journalist, he found that he gained the greatest degree of attention when he wrote fiction that “is all very strident and colourful, and of course not to be taken seriously – except for the fact that its purpose was to thrill and to surprise a large audience of somewhat credulous readers. This was the central paradox of Poe’s literary career” (pp. 57-58). Just as paradoxical was the fact that, while Poe’s editorial work for journals like the Southern Literary Messenger invariably resulted in increased circulation and publicity for said journals, Poe himself “was always desperately poor” (p. 56).
Students who are familiar with Poe’s life story will generally find Ackroyd’s conclusions regarding Poe’s character and personality sound, as when Ackroyd reflects on Poe’s 1843 visit to Washington, D.C.. In the Nation’s Capital as part of a campaign to secure a federal clerkship, Poe turned to drink, as was his wont, and his D.C. visit turned into a disaster. Of Poe’s misbehaviour on that occasion, Ackroyd writes that Poe “had a deep sense of pride, as well as an instinctive sense of formality and control. When these were abrogated and injured, he fell into sickness and grief. His illnesses were caused not by physical overindulgence but by guilty self-laceration” (p. 104).
At the same time, I was struck by the way Ackroyd focuses on Poe’s failings and weaknesses. Characteristic in that regard is Ackroyd’s remark that “In the extant photographs [of Poe] there was some contrast or disjunction between the right and left sides of the face, with slight but noticeable differences in the eye and mouth, brow and chin. One side was weaker than the other” (p. 109). If some Poe biographers, like Arthur Hobson Quinn, perhaps err in the direction of sympathizing with Poe, Ackroyd sometimes seems to err in the other direction.
Yet a consideration of the tragic circumstances of the death of Poe’s young wife Virginia does seem to inspire some sympathy from Ackroyd. Describing the desolate state of mental breakdown into which Poe fell after Virginia’s death in 1847, Ackroyd relates this tragedy to the theme of loss throughout Poe’s life, writing that “From his earliest life [Poe] harboured within himself an emptiness – a yearning for consolation and love and protection. And at the same time, he was lost in the world” (pp. 157-58).
This biography is so short that consideration of Poe’s literature and its impact sometimes seems to get lost amidst the undeniably vivid circumstances and events of Poe’s life. Fortunately, however, there are passages where Ackroyd writes thoughtfully about some of Poe’s best-known poems and stories. Ackroyd describes “The Raven” (1845) as “the poem that is a reverie and a lament, a threnody and a hymn, with its cadences so melodious and powerful that they still haunt the American poetic imagination. And there is, too, the plangency of the continual refrain of ‘Nevermore’” (p. 120).
Ackroyd’s remarks on the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) are comparably perceptive: “It has become one of the classics of the short story, or, rather, of the prose poem. It is one of the reasons why Poe was venerated as a master by writers as diverse as Baudelaire and Maeterlinck. It is a story of unnameable perversities in a house of the mind, a place not of this Earth. It is a setting for blood and darkness and mystery” (pp. 82-83).
This short biography works best for readers who are new to the study of Poe’s life and work. Like Paul Collins’s Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living (2014), it provides a quick and accessible look at the facts of Poe’s life. Readers who want something more in-depth might want to look to biographies like Jeffrey Meyers’s Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy (1992), Kenneth Silverman’s Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance (1991), and particularly Arthur Hobson Quinn’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (1941), a work that remains the gold standard in Poe biography. Ackroyd’s Poe: A Life Cut Short can provide the beginning Poe student with a good first step toward those larger works.
April 12, 2009
Short and sweet. Ackroyd's Poe: A Life Cut Short presents a good, short biography of Poe's life. It is not an in depth biography, so if you are looking for a long debate about whether or not Poe had sex with his wife, it isn't in this book, thankfully. Despite the book's short length, Ackroyd does deliver some good analysis of Poe's work as well.
February 5, 2010
What a fascinating study on the age old question of nature vs. nurture.
I expected Poe to have a tragic life to justify his creepy, albeit brilliant writing. This is a man who early on decided he was a victim. He was adopted at age 2 by loving wealthy parents who saw to his every need and loved him as their own. He complained and was ungrateful EVERY step of the way. He would lie to people about his misfortune, and try to manipulate their sympathy and he did this for his entire 40 years. Finally after his adopted mother died, his father saw how his riotous living and manipulation was draining him of his money and cut him off. For several years, his father would still try to help him, but at every opportunity Poe would quit an endeavor before he began, drinking and wallowing in self pity. He was given several editing jobs on magazines and had the opportunity to do great things, but would go on drinking binges and would always get fired.
He was mean. He would ridicule his contemporary writers, yet sue others for libel if they said anything unkind about him. He married his 14 year old cousin and would even one day disparage her name to others.
To be fair, he watched his mother, adoptive mother, wife, and brother die of consumption in eerily similar circumstances, which was the tragic part of his life, but his defense mechanisms must have not allowed him to truly love anyone other than himself in an act of self preservation and self destruction at the same time.
I can't figure out if he was mentally insane, or his base actions of a lifetime led to insanity.
Either way, he had a gift. I at least respect the fact that he never stopped writing. What if he had been a kind upstanding member of society? Well we probably would be reading The Haven as opposed to The Raven. Talk about choosing to suffer for your art...
I expected Poe to have a tragic life to justify his creepy, albeit brilliant writing. This is a man who early on decided he was a victim. He was adopted at age 2 by loving wealthy parents who saw to his every need and loved him as their own. He complained and was ungrateful EVERY step of the way. He would lie to people about his misfortune, and try to manipulate their sympathy and he did this for his entire 40 years. Finally after his adopted mother died, his father saw how his riotous living and manipulation was draining him of his money and cut him off. For several years, his father would still try to help him, but at every opportunity Poe would quit an endeavor before he began, drinking and wallowing in self pity. He was given several editing jobs on magazines and had the opportunity to do great things, but would go on drinking binges and would always get fired.
He was mean. He would ridicule his contemporary writers, yet sue others for libel if they said anything unkind about him. He married his 14 year old cousin and would even one day disparage her name to others.
To be fair, he watched his mother, adoptive mother, wife, and brother die of consumption in eerily similar circumstances, which was the tragic part of his life, but his defense mechanisms must have not allowed him to truly love anyone other than himself in an act of self preservation and self destruction at the same time.
I can't figure out if he was mentally insane, or his base actions of a lifetime led to insanity.
Either way, he had a gift. I at least respect the fact that he never stopped writing. What if he had been a kind upstanding member of society? Well we probably would be reading The Haven as opposed to The Raven. Talk about choosing to suffer for your art...
March 7, 2018
Confesso-me uma admiradora de E.A.Poe desde os tempos da adolescência.
Contudo, este livro desmistificou a imagem que tinha, de poeta torturado, génio incompreendido (penso que a idade também nos dá outro olhar sobre as coisas)...
Continuo a acreditar que seria um homem com uma inteligência acima da média, imaginativo e criativo. Mas também não seria a vítima do infortúnio do destino como por vezes se apresentava. Gostei bastante e tenho a certeza que os admiradores de Poe também irão gostar.
"Mas de que era feito o seu carácter no sentido mais geral da palavra? Poe tem sido alternadamente descrito como ambicioso e mesquinho, ciumento e introvertido, infantil e teatral, temeroso e malicioso, auto-confiante e prepotente, desafiante e auto-comiserado. Poe foi tudo isto, e mais. Um conhecido descreveu-o como 'instável como a água', e outro como um 'individuo desprovido de carácter'. Para outro ainda, que se tornou seu inimigo, Poe não passava de 'uma amostra de homem'.
Tal como a salamandra, ele apenas conseguia viver no fogo. Porém, o fogo era desencadeado pelas suas próprias mãos. Andou sempre de uma explosão apaixonada para outra. Não parecia conhecer-se a si mesmo, confiando antes no poder das palavras apaixonadas para criar uma identidade. Por vezes arremetia contra si mesmo, acumulando misérias e afastando-se dos outros, ao mesmo tempo que se apercebia que errava ao fazê-lo. Caminhava de forma incessante entre o desastre e a calamidade. A sua vida inteira foi um encadeamento de erros e revezes, de esperanças frustradas e ambições destruídas. Avançou sempre como se fosse o único no mundo - daí todo o rancor exalado pelo seu criticismo. Chamou a atenção para o seu estado de forma desafiante e celebradora, mesmo quando se lamentava nas suas cartas. Assim, no centro do seu trabalho apenas se poderia encontrar a fúria contra o mundo. O seu coração esteve sempre em vias de se despedaçar."
Contudo, este livro desmistificou a imagem que tinha, de poeta torturado, génio incompreendido (penso que a idade também nos dá outro olhar sobre as coisas)...
Continuo a acreditar que seria um homem com uma inteligência acima da média, imaginativo e criativo. Mas também não seria a vítima do infortúnio do destino como por vezes se apresentava. Gostei bastante e tenho a certeza que os admiradores de Poe também irão gostar.
"Mas de que era feito o seu carácter no sentido mais geral da palavra? Poe tem sido alternadamente descrito como ambicioso e mesquinho, ciumento e introvertido, infantil e teatral, temeroso e malicioso, auto-confiante e prepotente, desafiante e auto-comiserado. Poe foi tudo isto, e mais. Um conhecido descreveu-o como 'instável como a água', e outro como um 'individuo desprovido de carácter'. Para outro ainda, que se tornou seu inimigo, Poe não passava de 'uma amostra de homem'.
Tal como a salamandra, ele apenas conseguia viver no fogo. Porém, o fogo era desencadeado pelas suas próprias mãos. Andou sempre de uma explosão apaixonada para outra. Não parecia conhecer-se a si mesmo, confiando antes no poder das palavras apaixonadas para criar uma identidade. Por vezes arremetia contra si mesmo, acumulando misérias e afastando-se dos outros, ao mesmo tempo que se apercebia que errava ao fazê-lo. Caminhava de forma incessante entre o desastre e a calamidade. A sua vida inteira foi um encadeamento de erros e revezes, de esperanças frustradas e ambições destruídas. Avançou sempre como se fosse o único no mundo - daí todo o rancor exalado pelo seu criticismo. Chamou a atenção para o seu estado de forma desafiante e celebradora, mesmo quando se lamentava nas suas cartas. Assim, no centro do seu trabalho apenas se poderia encontrar a fúria contra o mundo. O seu coração esteve sempre em vias de se despedaçar."
February 3, 2009
Suggested alternate title — "Poe: Dude Was Fucked Up."
July 15, 2015
Dostoyevsky admired him. So did Baudaleare, Kafka, James Joyce and many others. Poe's work is so timeless, so up to date that we usually tend to forget that he's actually lived during 1800s where slavery was legal and allright as well as marrying minors, that the streets of New York was occupied by the pigs and horses and stuff! Reading this book made me realize again and again that Poe is a true legend.
And it also made me wanna travel back in time and hug this alcoholic, always-in-dept young Poe having daddy issues and suffering from friendlessness his entire life.
And then it comes to my mind, if I did that and heal his pain, would there be any Poe left? I guess we all know the answer.
His last words were "God, help my poor soul". He was only 40.
Lastly, I recommend everyone to read this book along with Poe's own stories. It'll be interesting, I guarantee.
And it also made me wanna travel back in time and hug this alcoholic, always-in-dept young Poe having daddy issues and suffering from friendlessness his entire life.
And then it comes to my mind, if I did that and heal his pain, would there be any Poe left? I guess we all know the answer.
His last words were "God, help my poor soul". He was only 40.
Lastly, I recommend everyone to read this book along with Poe's own stories. It'll be interesting, I guarantee.
February 13, 2019
A fantastic introduction to a fantastical man and the fantasy he created not only through his pen, but also through his life. Ackroyd's tone is highly readable and highly engaging - I look forward to reading more of his author sketches.
March 14, 2019
Poe ne acılar çekmişsin ya :((
July 31, 2022
واقعا بیوگرافی خوبی بود. دید خیلی کاملی به زندگی غمانگیز پو میداد. باعث شد بهتر بشناسمش. از این به بعد حین خوندن کارهاش درک بهتری ازشون خواهم داشت.
April 12, 2019
I find Poe to be fascinating and enjoy his poetry but this book depressed me too much. Poe did have a sad life but I got the feeling that Peter Ackroyd did not like him much. He said he was a genius and recognized by French writers and Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad and James Joyce but then would make some difficult remark that made me wonder. He said that Poe was insane and even Poe said that about himself but then Peter would talk about his confusion. Well, I think most mad people are confused so he was belaboring the issue.
I have read other books about Edgar Allan Poe and enjoyed them much more so I suggest reading a different book. This was just way too sad.
I have read other books about Edgar Allan Poe and enjoyed them much more so I suggest reading a different book. This was just way too sad.
January 20, 2023
The book begins with the end ---
..On waking he passed into delirium. On the Saturday evening he began to call out “Reynolds,” and did so continually until three on the following Sunday morning. “Having become enfeebled from exertion,” the doctor wrote, “he became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time, then gently moving his head he said ‘Lord Help my poor Soul’ and expired……………..”
On September 22, 1849, Poe took the boat to Baltimore in order to go to New York and make preparations for the wedding. What happened during the next few days is unknown.
On October 3, 1849, he was found lying drunk and unconscious near a polling booth in Baltimore. It was a election day there. He was removed in his unconscious sute to the Washington College Hospital. There he remained unconscious for a time.
On regaining awareness, he began to talk inarticulately. For four days his condition continued to be critical. Then at five o'clock in the morning of October 7, he uttered the prayer and he then breathed his last
What is dim and wretched, as Ackroyd shows is that bad luck did not stop hounding him even after his death. He had, by an error of judgment, appointed a man called Rufus Griswold his literary executor. This choice proved to be most inopportune for the reason that Griswold had always privately detested him possibly because Poe possessed the genius which Griswold himself lacked.
Just two days after Poe's death, Griswold published an article which proved to be a harsh assault upon Poe. And then Griswold started editing Poe's works in four volumes. In the third volume, Griswold inserted a biographical description of Poe, in which Poe was again ferociously disparaged and censured.
Griswold also went so far as to re-write some of Poe's letters in order to do further harm to Poe’s standing and he even forged some letters. Griswold's purpose was to slander Poe and he entirely succeeded in his purpose.
Numerous writers came to the defence of Poe's name and reputation. Among them were Mrs. Whitman and George Graham; but the damage had been done beyond repair, particularly in England. In France, though, the illustrious writer Baudelaire tried his best to whitewash Poe's name by translating Poe's best works into French and also by writing a memorable essay on Poe.
As a matter of fact, as this book tells us, Poe was never short of aficionados. Poe's standing continued to develop in the years immediately after his death, chiefly in England and in France.
Ackroyd says, ‘He overpoweringly affected Verlaine and Rimbaud; Mallarmé and Baudelaire both translated “The Raven” in homage to an American poet who in certain respects seemed to be a precursor of European Romanticism and in particular the harbinger of Symbolism and of Surrealism.’
Baudelaire announced that, on reading Poe's poems and stories, he had found “not merely certain subjects, which I had dreamed of, but sentences which I had thought out, written by him twenty years before.” Rémy de Gourmont asserted, in truth, that Poe belonged to French rather than to American literature.
Valéry told Gide that “Poe is the only flawless and unimpeachable writer. He is never mistaken.”
Poe's whole life was kind of nightmarish. This nightmare was even more awful than his stories. His writings were a mirror image of the internal chaos that was going on in him all the time. He remained preoccupied throughout his life with such themes as hurt, brutality, premature burial, and the mutilation of the body in the grave.
In fact, his fixation with these themes indicated a strapping death-wish on his part. The yearning for self-destruction had a strong hold upon him. His mind tended to turn inwards and gradually to devour itself until the very act of living became intolerable.
As a child, he had been very responsive and meditative; and on growing up he became an ego-centric who developed into an ego-maniac. His egocentricity had developed to such an extent that on one occasion he said that he could not imagine any human being better than himself.
Notwithstanding his poverty and the repeated rejections by various women of his matrimonial proposals after his wife's death, he remained fiercely proud of himself, and difficult to deal with.
Poe had no intimate friends and, as he grew older, there was nobody with whom he could have any free and frank conversations. He complained of his loneliness, but he did not try to find a solution for it except by a frantic search for feminine companionship.
In early childhood he seemed to be marked out for unhappiness; and the seeming possibility changed into a certainty as he grew older and older. In fact, he was not only born unlucky but proved to be self-destructive. Defeat after defeat afflicted him, with the result that his whole life became a slow suicide.
As a child he was motherless; as an adolescent he was humiliated and pushed out into a hostile world; and as a man he met continual disappointment. He took refuge in his fantasies. But he did not merely take refuge in fantasies; he turned them to a useful purpose.
Out of his unhappiness came the stuff of his dreams which became the material for his poems and his stories. The force which drove him to sorrow and acute hypochondria also drove him to create his literary works.
From the age of twenty-two, he was faced with a life of struggle and constant poverty, for which his nervous system was wretchedly ill-equipped; but his very hardships and bad luck proved, in one sense, a blessing in disguise.
After he was gone, Alfred Tennyson would describe him as “the most original genius that America has produced,” worthy to stand beside Catullus and Heine. After he had bid adieu to the world, Thomas Hardy would consider him to be “the first to realise in full the possibility of the English language,” and Yeats would believe that he was “certainly the greatest of American poets.”
The science fiction works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would be heavily indebted to him, and Arthur Conan Doyle would pay tribute to Poe's mastery of the detective genre.
After he had severed all ties with the world of the living and had become a ‘memory’ Nietzsche and Kafka would both honour him, and glimpse in his sad career the outline of their own suffering souls.
He would be admired by the likes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce, who would see in him the seeds of modern literature.
All rich tributes paid to a man who remained unsung in life. To quote the author of this book, ‘The orphan, in the end, found his true family…’
Much recommended…….
..On waking he passed into delirium. On the Saturday evening he began to call out “Reynolds,” and did so continually until three on the following Sunday morning. “Having become enfeebled from exertion,” the doctor wrote, “he became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time, then gently moving his head he said ‘Lord Help my poor Soul’ and expired……………..”
On September 22, 1849, Poe took the boat to Baltimore in order to go to New York and make preparations for the wedding. What happened during the next few days is unknown.
On October 3, 1849, he was found lying drunk and unconscious near a polling booth in Baltimore. It was a election day there. He was removed in his unconscious sute to the Washington College Hospital. There he remained unconscious for a time.
On regaining awareness, he began to talk inarticulately. For four days his condition continued to be critical. Then at five o'clock in the morning of October 7, he uttered the prayer and he then breathed his last
What is dim and wretched, as Ackroyd shows is that bad luck did not stop hounding him even after his death. He had, by an error of judgment, appointed a man called Rufus Griswold his literary executor. This choice proved to be most inopportune for the reason that Griswold had always privately detested him possibly because Poe possessed the genius which Griswold himself lacked.
Just two days after Poe's death, Griswold published an article which proved to be a harsh assault upon Poe. And then Griswold started editing Poe's works in four volumes. In the third volume, Griswold inserted a biographical description of Poe, in which Poe was again ferociously disparaged and censured.
Griswold also went so far as to re-write some of Poe's letters in order to do further harm to Poe’s standing and he even forged some letters. Griswold's purpose was to slander Poe and he entirely succeeded in his purpose.
Numerous writers came to the defence of Poe's name and reputation. Among them were Mrs. Whitman and George Graham; but the damage had been done beyond repair, particularly in England. In France, though, the illustrious writer Baudelaire tried his best to whitewash Poe's name by translating Poe's best works into French and also by writing a memorable essay on Poe.
As a matter of fact, as this book tells us, Poe was never short of aficionados. Poe's standing continued to develop in the years immediately after his death, chiefly in England and in France.
Ackroyd says, ‘He overpoweringly affected Verlaine and Rimbaud; Mallarmé and Baudelaire both translated “The Raven” in homage to an American poet who in certain respects seemed to be a precursor of European Romanticism and in particular the harbinger of Symbolism and of Surrealism.’
Baudelaire announced that, on reading Poe's poems and stories, he had found “not merely certain subjects, which I had dreamed of, but sentences which I had thought out, written by him twenty years before.” Rémy de Gourmont asserted, in truth, that Poe belonged to French rather than to American literature.
Valéry told Gide that “Poe is the only flawless and unimpeachable writer. He is never mistaken.”
Poe's whole life was kind of nightmarish. This nightmare was even more awful than his stories. His writings were a mirror image of the internal chaos that was going on in him all the time. He remained preoccupied throughout his life with such themes as hurt, brutality, premature burial, and the mutilation of the body in the grave.
In fact, his fixation with these themes indicated a strapping death-wish on his part. The yearning for self-destruction had a strong hold upon him. His mind tended to turn inwards and gradually to devour itself until the very act of living became intolerable.
As a child, he had been very responsive and meditative; and on growing up he became an ego-centric who developed into an ego-maniac. His egocentricity had developed to such an extent that on one occasion he said that he could not imagine any human being better than himself.
Notwithstanding his poverty and the repeated rejections by various women of his matrimonial proposals after his wife's death, he remained fiercely proud of himself, and difficult to deal with.
Poe had no intimate friends and, as he grew older, there was nobody with whom he could have any free and frank conversations. He complained of his loneliness, but he did not try to find a solution for it except by a frantic search for feminine companionship.
In early childhood he seemed to be marked out for unhappiness; and the seeming possibility changed into a certainty as he grew older and older. In fact, he was not only born unlucky but proved to be self-destructive. Defeat after defeat afflicted him, with the result that his whole life became a slow suicide.
As a child he was motherless; as an adolescent he was humiliated and pushed out into a hostile world; and as a man he met continual disappointment. He took refuge in his fantasies. But he did not merely take refuge in fantasies; he turned them to a useful purpose.
Out of his unhappiness came the stuff of his dreams which became the material for his poems and his stories. The force which drove him to sorrow and acute hypochondria also drove him to create his literary works.
From the age of twenty-two, he was faced with a life of struggle and constant poverty, for which his nervous system was wretchedly ill-equipped; but his very hardships and bad luck proved, in one sense, a blessing in disguise.
After he was gone, Alfred Tennyson would describe him as “the most original genius that America has produced,” worthy to stand beside Catullus and Heine. After he had bid adieu to the world, Thomas Hardy would consider him to be “the first to realise in full the possibility of the English language,” and Yeats would believe that he was “certainly the greatest of American poets.”
The science fiction works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would be heavily indebted to him, and Arthur Conan Doyle would pay tribute to Poe's mastery of the detective genre.
After he had severed all ties with the world of the living and had become a ‘memory’ Nietzsche and Kafka would both honour him, and glimpse in his sad career the outline of their own suffering souls.
He would be admired by the likes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce, who would see in him the seeds of modern literature.
All rich tributes paid to a man who remained unsung in life. To quote the author of this book, ‘The orphan, in the end, found his true family…’
Much recommended…….
January 6, 2025
short cut: a well-researched, concise, and at times a tiny bit sensational overview as a solid starting point for further in-depth analysis of the gothic romanticist and satiric harbinger of death and his body of work
February 4, 2025
I love Edgar Allan Poe and this was interesting to learn about him.
October 9, 2021
Sin duda hay personas que tienen mala suerte desde el día de su nacimiento y Edgar Allan Poe fue uno de ellos.
Pobre rallando la miseria, se quedó huérfano siendo un niño. Le adoptó una familia con dinero pero la relación con su padre adoptivo era terrible y en cuanto tuvo edad para irse, se fue. Empezó a tener problemas con la bebida, las mujeres, etc. Creo que su salud mental se debilitó desde que era un niño, se ve en su inestabilidad emocional, su incapacidad para mantener un empleo, su arrogancia, orgullo y egoísmo en según qué situaciones, su imposibilidad para intimar con una mujer, ni siquiera estando casado, su afición a la bebida, etc.
Una vida terrible pero, como todos los genios, gracias a ello hoy podemos disfrutar de "El cuervo" y tantos otros poemas, relatos, cuentos, etc. que nos ha legado.
Pobre rallando la miseria, se quedó huérfano siendo un niño. Le adoptó una familia con dinero pero la relación con su padre adoptivo era terrible y en cuanto tuvo edad para irse, se fue. Empezó a tener problemas con la bebida, las mujeres, etc. Creo que su salud mental se debilitó desde que era un niño, se ve en su inestabilidad emocional, su incapacidad para mantener un empleo, su arrogancia, orgullo y egoísmo en según qué situaciones, su imposibilidad para intimar con una mujer, ni siquiera estando casado, su afición a la bebida, etc.
Una vida terrible pero, como todos los genios, gracias a ello hoy podemos disfrutar de "El cuervo" y tantos otros poemas, relatos, cuentos, etc. que nos ha legado.
September 18, 2020
For content alone, I would have given POE: A LIFE CUT SHORT 4-stars, but I must remove one due to the Kindle version presentation. Although an extensive list of illustrations is listed in the book ... several of them seeming most intriguing ... Doubleday decided not to include them in the Kindle version. As anyone who uses the Kindle app knows, there is no reason to do this. Illustrations can be beautifully rendered, even in color. To my mind, their absence shows a marked lack of respect for a segment of its Readers.
The other issue is that this “brief life” version provides very little detail about most of Poe’s works. The writer is quite knowledgeable and very, very readable. As is shown in the commentary he makes about Poe’s lesser known works, there is much more he could have added in the form of a literary analysis. However, if it is a more popular title, the writer assumes that the Reader is familiar with it and leaves it at that.
For the person wanting an overview of Poe’s life without being bogged down in too many details, the print version of this book would be a good choice. The best way I could describe it is to compare it to one of those A&E “Biography” television offerings. There is enough to satisfy the idly curious, and references for those who wish to explore further.
The other issue is that this “brief life” version provides very little detail about most of Poe’s works. The writer is quite knowledgeable and very, very readable. As is shown in the commentary he makes about Poe’s lesser known works, there is much more he could have added in the form of a literary analysis. However, if it is a more popular title, the writer assumes that the Reader is familiar with it and leaves it at that.
For the person wanting an overview of Poe’s life without being bogged down in too many details, the print version of this book would be a good choice. The best way I could describe it is to compare it to one of those A&E “Biography” television offerings. There is enough to satisfy the idly curious, and references for those who wish to explore further.
May 6, 2012
Poe. What a dick.
Look, I'm not saying Poe wasn't a great writer. But he doesn't seem to have been somebody I would want to be in the same room with. Not for even ten minutes. Unlike HP Lovecraft, where the more I found out the more fascinating he was, the more I found out about Poe, page by page, the less I wanted to know. But - a good biography, if you don't mind having your heroes revealed as whiny, self-involved alcoholics who wreck everything good in their lives and blame their failings on everyone else.
I'm sure there's another biography out there that presents him in a more favorable light. But I really got the sense that this is what it comes down to.
Look, I'm not saying Poe wasn't a great writer. But he doesn't seem to have been somebody I would want to be in the same room with. Not for even ten minutes. Unlike HP Lovecraft, where the more I found out the more fascinating he was, the more I found out about Poe, page by page, the less I wanted to know. But - a good biography, if you don't mind having your heroes revealed as whiny, self-involved alcoholics who wreck everything good in their lives and blame their failings on everyone else.
I'm sure there's another biography out there that presents him in a more favorable light. But I really got the sense that this is what it comes down to.
January 23, 2018
Whew. I am glad to be done with this one. I picked it up while at the library intending to enjoy it as a tribute to Poe's recent birthday. Nothing against Mr. Ackroyd's writing, that was his usual quality, but the material is hard to absorb. I do not remember when I felt more agitated while reading a book than I did throughout this one. I knew that Poe had led an unhappy life, but this was depressing on a level that I wasn't quite prepared for. It is no secret how much I love Poe's writing, but I will read his material now with an even greater sense of melancholy. I do believe in an afterlife and I dearly hope that he has found some peace there.
Quotes to remember:
"I do belive God gave me a spark of genius but He quenched it in misery."
"Poe didn't like trifling and small talk. He didn't like dark-skinned people...He had a quick, passionate temper, and was very jealous. His feelings were intense, and he had but little control of them. He was not well-balanced, he had too much brain. He scoffed everything sacred and never went to church...He said often that there was a mystery hanging over him he never could fathom." -Mary Devereaux (This just about sums him up as concisely as one could sum up such a complex character.)
"My whole nature utterly revolts at the ideas that there is any Being in the Universe superior to myself."
Quotes to remember:
"I do belive God gave me a spark of genius but He quenched it in misery."
"Poe didn't like trifling and small talk. He didn't like dark-skinned people...He had a quick, passionate temper, and was very jealous. His feelings were intense, and he had but little control of them. He was not well-balanced, he had too much brain. He scoffed everything sacred and never went to church...He said often that there was a mystery hanging over him he never could fathom." -Mary Devereaux (This just about sums him up as concisely as one could sum up such a complex character.)
"My whole nature utterly revolts at the ideas that there is any Being in the Universe superior to myself."
January 13, 2020
Short and sweet.
Peter Ackroyd managed to not only create an altogether engaging biography and bit of literary criticism, but also to paint a vibrant portrait of just who the man Poe was. There is ample primary source material referenced throughout the book, and sometimes the primary source material disagrees with other source material. Ackroyd manages to take such inconsistencies and weave them into a more complicated view of Poe the man and why his behavior might have differed so greatly between the various people within his life.
This biography is compassionate, but not fawning. Poe emerges as an altogether mercurial figure constantly battling his own "Imp of Perverse". Drink, as always, it the antagonist. Griswold's image of Poe is referred to but not revered and I feel that Ackroyd struck a good balance between the popular image of Poe and the real man. He certainly presented enough evidence to support Poe's battle with alcohol throughout his life, even if it was not to the extreme extent that Griswold later made it out to be. It was potent enough, damaging enough, to leave deep scars upon Poe's existence.
This was a handy biography, and a compelling read. I was never bored throughout it and was very often surprised by aspects of Poe's life that I knew little about. In particular, his relationship with women and the question of just what form that strange affection may have manifested. I would heartily recommend this biography to anyone interested in Poe and diving a bit deeper into his life. I will also most certainly be reading more biographies on him as time goes on.
Peter Ackroyd managed to not only create an altogether engaging biography and bit of literary criticism, but also to paint a vibrant portrait of just who the man Poe was. There is ample primary source material referenced throughout the book, and sometimes the primary source material disagrees with other source material. Ackroyd manages to take such inconsistencies and weave them into a more complicated view of Poe the man and why his behavior might have differed so greatly between the various people within his life.
This biography is compassionate, but not fawning. Poe emerges as an altogether mercurial figure constantly battling his own "Imp of Perverse". Drink, as always, it the antagonist. Griswold's image of Poe is referred to but not revered and I feel that Ackroyd struck a good balance between the popular image of Poe and the real man. He certainly presented enough evidence to support Poe's battle with alcohol throughout his life, even if it was not to the extreme extent that Griswold later made it out to be. It was potent enough, damaging enough, to leave deep scars upon Poe's existence.
This was a handy biography, and a compelling read. I was never bored throughout it and was very often surprised by aspects of Poe's life that I knew little about. In particular, his relationship with women and the question of just what form that strange affection may have manifested. I would heartily recommend this biography to anyone interested in Poe and diving a bit deeper into his life. I will also most certainly be reading more biographies on him as time goes on.
November 2, 2009
For Halloween weekend, I read this little biography which contained a number of biographical details but was focused towards Poe's quest for family.
I knew from reading anthology entries about Poe that he was an orphan, a hard drinker, and emotionally injured from losing his mother and his young wife to early deaths. (They both died at age 24.) But reading nearly 200 pages of detail about his life really painted a picture of a man in pain, a man who increasingly lost control of his life. His last year, all of his life-long problems were exaggerated to the point of self-destructive behaviors: he drank to excess, he wrote letters to a variety of people with the aim of begging for love and money, he wrote hoax newspaper stories, he was caught up in scandals involving married women, old flames, extended family, and literati from the east coast and Great Britain.
After reading all this, I wonder which (or by what percentage) his problems were caused by mental illness, childhood trauma, excessive drinking, the use of drugs, taking a victim posture with others, and/or a tendency to let his emotions rule him.
This book does contain detail about his writing career, but the themes focus more on his need to belong and to have someone care for him emotionally and financially. Needy, needy, needy. Who knew?
I knew from reading anthology entries about Poe that he was an orphan, a hard drinker, and emotionally injured from losing his mother and his young wife to early deaths. (They both died at age 24.) But reading nearly 200 pages of detail about his life really painted a picture of a man in pain, a man who increasingly lost control of his life. His last year, all of his life-long problems were exaggerated to the point of self-destructive behaviors: he drank to excess, he wrote letters to a variety of people with the aim of begging for love and money, he wrote hoax newspaper stories, he was caught up in scandals involving married women, old flames, extended family, and literati from the east coast and Great Britain.
After reading all this, I wonder which (or by what percentage) his problems were caused by mental illness, childhood trauma, excessive drinking, the use of drugs, taking a victim posture with others, and/or a tendency to let his emotions rule him.
This book does contain detail about his writing career, but the themes focus more on his need to belong and to have someone care for him emotionally and financially. Needy, needy, needy. Who knew?
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November 21, 2023Me pareció re interesante leer sobre su vida, había veces que me perdía con tantos nombres pero dentro de todo aprendí mucho sobre él y me agarró como una tristeza cuando lo terminé por la forma de vida que tuvo, su falta de recursos económicos, la bronca que le tenían otros escritores en esa época, su problema con el alcohol y todas las pérdidas de familiares que tuvo que sufrir
March 6, 2014
reading on a smart phone is not ideal is it!? This was the first and it will be the last in iphone format.
Anyways onto the book. I knew less than nothing about Poe's demise, how intriguing and yet befitting!
I am a sucker for Ackroyd though.
:O)
Anyways onto the book. I knew less than nothing about Poe's demise, how intriguing and yet befitting!
I am a sucker for Ackroyd though.
:O)
November 27, 2022
There is a point where irony and decay meet, and it is not at all clear whether Poe is laughing or weeping at his own inventions.
Ackroyd appeared to perform a thorough investigation of Poe's life but this book was limited by the lack of real information about Poe's life. Prior to reading this book, I knew next to nothing about Poe's life other than the romantic figurehead he became for the American gothic genre. As Ackroyd stated, he "was dogged by poverty, and cursed by lack of success; yet he seemed to some of his contemporaries to be patiently enduring his fate." While Poe's inauspicious beginnings were sad beyond all measure, life is what one makes of it. He blamed all of his failings on his foster family, particularly his foster father, who had given him all the means for success in life. Poe chose to wallow in his depression by drinking himself into a stupor, denied any friends and loved ones, and had the contrary knack for ruining all opportunities he was given in life. He was such a confabulist, it was hard to believe anything he said.
I came away not being much impressed with Poe. Although Ackroyd claimed he was the father of the gothic genre at a time when America's literary talents were just becoming recognized, Poe's self importance and smugness were a real turn off for me. As a critic that blasted every author around him, it is hard to take him seriously when it seemed like he was so unnecessarily harsh in order to boost his own self importance. Before reading this book, I had wanted to tackle Poe's writing but after reading this biography, I'm not that interested any more.
Ackroyd appeared to perform a thorough investigation of Poe's life but this book was limited by the lack of real information about Poe's life. Prior to reading this book, I knew next to nothing about Poe's life other than the romantic figurehead he became for the American gothic genre. As Ackroyd stated, he "was dogged by poverty, and cursed by lack of success; yet he seemed to some of his contemporaries to be patiently enduring his fate." While Poe's inauspicious beginnings were sad beyond all measure, life is what one makes of it. He blamed all of his failings on his foster family, particularly his foster father, who had given him all the means for success in life. Poe chose to wallow in his depression by drinking himself into a stupor, denied any friends and loved ones, and had the contrary knack for ruining all opportunities he was given in life. He was such a confabulist, it was hard to believe anything he said.
I came away not being much impressed with Poe. Although Ackroyd claimed he was the father of the gothic genre at a time when America's literary talents were just becoming recognized, Poe's self importance and smugness were a real turn off for me. As a critic that blasted every author around him, it is hard to take him seriously when it seemed like he was so unnecessarily harsh in order to boost his own self importance. Before reading this book, I had wanted to tackle Poe's writing but after reading this biography, I'm not that interested any more.
February 2, 2022
Such a troubled life beautifully described.
June 14, 2016
Sometimes I found it a bit boring to read again and again about Poe's drunkenness, which destroyed his life – even if all these stories might be true. I found it more interesting that Ackroyds refers to Poes childhood in Richmond/Virginia, which made him to a supporter of slavery and brought him in opposite to the Bostonians and their transzendalism.
That the loss of his parents, especially his mother, and the experience of orphanage influenced his life and work is here described very convincingly. But that the depiction of beautiful dying or dead women should be (solely) the result of these experiences isn't plausible, if you consider that the topos is widespread in the Gothic Literatur of this time. It can be seen as a product of social circumstances, especially sex morals, in this time and is well described by Elisabeth Bronfen in Over Her Dead Body (and she quotes Poe a lot).
I also liked that Ackroyd points out that Poes' Tales are not only uncanny but in the same moment imply a strange kind of humour (Poe called himself a satirist).
In a nutshell, this Ackroyd is like every book by this author, worth to read.
That the loss of his parents, especially his mother, and the experience of orphanage influenced his life and work is here described very convincingly. But that the depiction of beautiful dying or dead women should be (solely) the result of these experiences isn't plausible, if you consider that the topos is widespread in the Gothic Literatur of this time. It can be seen as a product of social circumstances, especially sex morals, in this time and is well described by Elisabeth Bronfen in Over Her Dead Body (and she quotes Poe a lot).
I also liked that Ackroyd points out that Poes' Tales are not only uncanny but in the same moment imply a strange kind of humour (Poe called himself a satirist).
In a nutshell, this Ackroyd is like every book by this author, worth to read.
April 5, 2016
Biografija koju piše Piter Akrojd počinje tokom šest poslednjih dana Poovog života. Niko ne zna šta se dogodilo od momenta kada su ga prijatelji ispratili na parobrod u Baltimoru do smrti šest dana kasnije u jednoj lokalnoj kafani.
*Solidna, vredna, informativna knjiga: ako volite Poa (a ko ga ne voli?!) – ovo vredi imati.(*Dejan Ognjanović)
*Solidna, vredna, informativna knjiga: ako volite Poa (a ko ga ne voli?!) – ovo vredi imati.(*Dejan Ognjanović)
November 19, 2018
Daquelas biografias que ficas admirado com tanta coisa que aprendes. Do Poe apenas li alguns contos, nada de outro mundo. Antes de atirar-me de cabeça nas suas histórias quis saber mais acerca da vida dele. Este livro foi perfeito para isso. Agora sinto-me preparada para ler Poe e deixar-me apaixonar.
March 14, 2018
"Dios me dio una chispa de genialidad, pero la apagó en la miseria". Buena biografía. No es de las mejores, pero allana mucho el camino a aquellos que quieran saber lo triste que fue la vida de Poe.
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