Product Information
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. Heralded as a genius, the forerunner of modern fantasy and credited with the invention of the psychological drama, science fiction and the detective story , Edgar Allan Poe had a life as dramatic and tragic as his art.Poe's life was dominated by dying women; his mother died of consumption when he was only two, his stepmother when he was twenty, and his wife, Virginia, died of the same disease and at the same age as his mother. As Ackroyd brilliantly shows, it was these deaths, together with his miserable childhood, that led to such dark and dazzling tales as 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and 'Berenice', although it was wiht the publication of 'The Raven' that the writer finally ahcieved the recognition of which he dreamed. Success couldn't save him from himself, however, and he was dead by the age of forty, his final days as mysterious as much of his writing.Poe was an extraordinary writer and in Peter Ackroyd, he has found his perfect biographer.Product Identifiers
PublisherVintage Publishing
ISBN-139780099287674
eBay Product ID (ePID)86696166
Product Key Features
Book TitlePoe: a Life Cut Short
Number of Pages192 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2009
TopicLiterature
GenreBiographies & True Stories
AuthorPeter Ackroyd
FormatPaperback
Dimensions
Item Height198 mm
Item Weight150 g
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited Kingdom
Title_AuthorPeter Ackroyd