THE HAUNTED PALACE: A Life of Edgar Allan Poe

by Frances Winwar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 1958

With Eugene O'Neill and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allan Poe shares that strange fascination of a controversial figure, more legend than fact, subject to almost morbid concentration on the irregularities of their lives, the excesses of their indulgences, the imbalance of their genius. Frances Winwar, in this her second American figure from literature, has explored the mass of material about Poe, much of it biassed-one way or another, much of it guesswork. She has explored the known facts, analyzed the distortions of a personality, basically ill, and linked in intimate interrelation, his writings, the personalities that came into closest association, his emotional involvements, and the bitter frustration of his dreams, his escape from the bitter realities of rejection, abject poverty, physical and emotional instability and suffering for a sense of persecution. This is a biography of the man in relation to his work, rather than a critical appraisal of the work itself. At times lushly overwritten, none the less this emerges as a deeply felt, almost obsessive biography.

Pub Date: Jan. 19, 1958

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958

Categories: NONFICTION