Word: poe
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...LETTERS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE (664 pp.) -Edited by John Ward Ostrom -Harvard Unitversity...
...Poe's tragedy is one that haunts the imagination no matter how much or how little is known of his life. Hervey Allen's Israfel cleared up most of the legendary mysteries of his career without making the poet himself any less strange, or unearthly a character. This handsome two-volume edition of Poe's letters, the work of John Ward Ostrom (associate professor of English at Wittenberg College), is essential to every serious student of Poe's career; but on the basis of this collection alone the reader might well form a picture of America...
Misfortunes. Poe's story is not greatly changed by such new information as the full text of his letters provides; it merely seems more miserable. The child of actors, he lost his mother before he was three years old, and was taken into the household of John Allan, a Scot by birth, who inherited a considerable fortune-Poe estimated...
...Poe left the University of Virginia in disgrace after Allan refused to pay his school bills and gambling debts of reportedly $2,500. He published his first poems, joined the Army under an assumed name, served two years, and in 1830 was appointed to West Point. Much older than his fellow cadets, and a hardened veteran, he spent seven months at the Point, then engineered his own court-martial and dismissal (for trivial offenses...
Tradition has it that he was unpopular with the other cadets, though they raised by subscription enough money to publish a book of his poems after he left. At 27, Poe was a moderately successful magazine editor in Baltimore, married to his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm...