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Edgar Allan Poe * Kevin J. Hayes * London: Reaktion Books, 2009 * 188 pp. * $16.95
This contribution to Reaktion's Critical Lives series, distributed in the United States by the University of Chicago Press, fills the significant need for a well-researched, short biography of Edgar Allan Poe that is useful to both scholars and general readers. Edgar AlUn Poe presents Poe as a pioneering professional author whose work points out the future of art in a wide variety of media, including film, while it also shapes modern concepts of identity, urban spectatorship, and tourism.
After opening with chapters on the reception of Poe's works and on his early efforts to define himself as an author, Edgar Allan Poe explores his development by tying the content and form of a particular group of writings to a temporal context in Poe's life. For example, in chapter three, "The Gothic Woman," Hayes focuses on the trilogy of short stories featuring...