Edgar Allan Poe: A Life

by Richard Kopley

Overview

A groundbreaking exploration of one of America’s most iconic and misunderstood authors

Edgar Allan Poe: A Life is the most comprehensive critical biography of Poe yet produced, exploring his fascinating life, his extraordinary work, and the vital relationship between the two. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre found in such works as “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” this legendary American author continues to intrigue and enthrall his devoted readers. Written by one of the world’s leading Poe experts, this biography is a rich and rewarding study for the general reader as well as for the seasoned scholar. Richard Kopley combines a biographical narrative of Poe’s enduring challenges—including his difficult foster father, his personal losses, his great struggles with depression and alcoholism, and the poverty that dogged his existence—with close readings of his work that focus not only on plot, character, and theme but also on language, allusion, and structure in a way that enhances our understanding of both. While incorporating past Poe scholarship, this volume also relates unknown stories of Poe culled from privately held letters unavailable to previous biographers, presenting a range of groundbreaking archival discoveries that illuminate the man and his oeuvre in ways never before possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813952239
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Pages:	736
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Richard Kopley is Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Penn State DuBois, the author and editor of numerous books on Poe and American literature, and recipient of the 2018 Lifetime Achievement & Service Award from the Poe Studies Association.

What People are Saying About This

Philip Edward Phillips

This is a great biography, faithful to the life in good times and bad. It is highly original—using previously unseen, personal primary sources—deeply moving, and a real pleasure to read. Kopley offers us the best of both worlds: an up-close, personal account of Poe the man, the son, the friend, and the husband as well as an insightful and dependable critical study of Poe’s works and literary career.

David S. Reynolds

Superbly researched and engagingly written, Richard Kopley’s biography of Poe draws from an extraordinary range of sources, many of them previously untapped. Kopley gives us the real Poe, separated from myth and legend. In doing so, he makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of one of the greats of world literature.

Bradford Morrow

In what is destined to be the definitive biography of one of America’s most pioneering and influential writers, Richard Kopley’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Life reveals in meticulous detail the struggles and triumphs of this singularly complex man. Kopley provides intimate, revelatory readings of Poe’s masterpieces and lesser-known writings while narrating his tormented subject’s personal story. Historically detailed and artfully crafted, this is a magisterial work animated on every page by Kopley’s compassionate and clear-sighted scholarship. Edgar Allan Poe emerges as a fully formed human being forever convinced of his genius no matter how heavily his many life struggles weigh on him. Kopley’s Poe is cause for celebration among scholars and lay readers alike.

From the Publisher

Filled with fresh information and illuminating detail, Richard Kopley’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Life is a work of great erudition and insight. Sure to become an indispensable resource, Kopley’s long-awaited biography is the worthy capstone of a distinguished career in Poe studies. Kopley tells us he has read and researched Poe for so long, the writer has become a friend. Read Edgar Allan Poe and make him yours.—Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart.

Superbly researched and engagingly written, Richard Kopley’s biography of Poe draws from an extraordinary range of sources, many of them previously untapped. Kopley gives us the real Poe, separated from myth and legend. In doing so, he makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of one of the greats of world literature.—David S. Reynolds, author of Beneath the American Renaissance and Walt Whitman’s America

In what is destined to be the definitive biography of one of America’s most pioneering and influential writers, Richard Kopley’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Life reveals in meticulous detail the struggles and triumphs of this singularly complex man. Kopley provides intimate, revelatory readings of Poe’s masterpieces and lesser-known writings while narrating his tormented subject’s personal story. Historically detailed and artfully crafted, this is a magisterial work animated on every page by Kopley’s compassionate and clear-sighted scholarship. Edgar Allan Poe emerges as a fully formed human being forever convinced of his genius no matter how heavily his many life struggles weigh on him. Kopley’s Poe is cause for celebration among scholars and lay readers alike.—Bradford Morrow, author of The Prague Sonata and the Forgers trilogy

This is a great biography, faithful to the life in good times and bad. It is highly original—using previously unseen, personal primary sources—deeply moving, and a real pleasure to read. Kopley offers us the best of both worlds: an up-close, personal account of Poe the man, the son, the friend, and the husband as well as an insightful and dependable critical study of Poe’s works and literary career.—Philip Edward Phillips, Middle Tennessee State University, editor of Poe and Place and President of the Poe Studies Association

Megan Marshall

Filled with fresh information and illuminating detail, Richard Kopley’s Edgar Allan Poe: A Life is a work of great erudition and insight. Sure to become an indispensable resource, Kopley’s long-awaited biography is the worthy capstone of a distinguished career in Poe studies. Kopley tells us he has read and researched Poe for so long, the writer has become a friend. Read Edgar Allan Poe and make him yours.

Editorial Reviews

[A] magisterial critical biography. . . . Kopley excels at elucidating how Poe's life influenced his work. . . . Blending rich literary analysis with new insights into Poe's character, this proves there's still plenty left to say about the master of the macabre.—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Kopley brings authoritative insight to a critical biography of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) that can well be called definitive. . . . A richly detailed, sympathetic portrait.—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Thoughtful and compassionate . . . [a] tale of success and setback, temperance and bacchanals, playing out across the Atlantic seaboard and end-stopped by a death no less tragic for being in the cards. . . Where Kopley really excels is in connecting the life back to the work.—Louis Bayard, The Washington Post

From the Publisher

★ 2024-12-28
Poe’s challenges.

Poe scholar Kopley brings authoritative insight to a critical biography of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) that can well be called definitive. Drawing on abundant sources, including newly available correspondence of a stepdaughter of Poe’s best friend, Kopley offers informative close readings of Poe’s poetry, reviews, and fiction, as he recounts his life, loves, aspirations, and travails. Recalled by his schoolmaster as a 12-year-old “cheerful, brimful of mirth,” Poe, according to a classmate, could be “self-willed, capricious,” and imperious; others found him sad and melancholy. Until he left for college, he lived with foster parents, enduring a vexed relationship with his foster father, John Allan. Frequently in financial trouble, Allan took out his frustrations on his young ward, providing such paltry financial support for college, for example, that Poe spent only 10 months at the University of Virginia. Drinking, gambling, fighting, and defying authority also factored into his aborted college career. Later, he enrolled at West Point, where he ended up arrested and court-martialed for dereliction of duty. A hardworking writer who dreamed of editing a literary magazine, his productivity was undermined by alcoholism. Still, as Kopley amply shows, he published a prodigious body of work: reviews, poems, and stories. In 1836, he married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia, an apparently charming young girl, fond of puppies and kittens. Evidence suggests that they had no sex for two years, and Poe, basking in his wife’s love, gave up drinking for a while. Virginia, diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1842, died in 1847, plunging her husband into deep mourning. Although Poe became a literary lion after the publication of “The Raven” in 1845, Kopley depicts a man dogged by darkness.

A richly detailed, sympathetic portrait.

Kirkus Reviews