Raven - Softcover

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is the poet of the night world, of the inexplicable, the uncanny. His poems do not analyse, they do not explain: they exist with the intensity of hallucinations. In the breathtakingly seductive beauty of 'To Helen' - 'Like those Nicean barks of yore, /that gently o'er a perfumed sea...', or the claustrophobic horror of 'The Raven', Poe offers haunting alternative realities, as strange - and strangely familiar - as our dreams and nightmares. Yet Poe was more than a poet of American gothic. He was translated by Baudelaire and Mallarme, becoming a key figure in French Symbolism; he was an influential critic. This edition contains all Poe's poetry and his three most important essays. With an introduction by the poet C.H. Sisson, it is an indispensable collection of the work of one of the nineteenth century's most compelling and original poets.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809. Both his parents were actors. His father had abandoned the family, and after his mother died Poe was cared for by John Allan, a tobacco merchant, and his wife, in Richmond, Virginia. The Allans took Poe with them on a visit to England in 1815, and Poe attended school in London until 1820. In 1826 he enrolled at the University of Virginia, but left a year later when Allan refused to pay his debts. He left the Allans and joined the army in Boston. In 1829 Allan supported his admission to West Point Military Academy, but he was expelled within a year. Returning to Boston, Poe lived with his aunt and her daughter. In 1836 he married his cousin, and set out to make a living writing and editing. In later years Poe lived in Philadelphia and New York. His wife died in 1847, and after a failed suicide attempt in 1848 Poe returned to Baltimore, where he died in 1849.