This book is aimed at advanced high school and lower-level college/university students. It consists of chapter 1, “Life,” in which the mythologies (often quite negative) that have grown up around Poe the person are avoided in favor of a factual account. Chapter 2, “Works,” provides coverage of Poe's works and their place in the literature of the world. After all, what initially gained Poe widespread attention was his critical writings, an irony since during his teens and early twenties he intensely wanted to be regarded as a poet. An additional irony is that Poe very deliberately turned to the writing of fiction, chiefly short stories, which appeared in newspapers and literary magazines, because such wares had wide circulation and usually paid sooner and better than the process of turning copy into books tended to do. As scholars have discovered, some of Poe's works were copied from their original sources by newspapers in distant locales, or were pirated by British periodicals. Poe's fiction and some of his poems continue to be read, to be sure, as his most appealing imaginative writings. Because his critical ideas appeared mainly in reviews instead of in a single, extended book, they have, with few exceptions, not attracted a readership so large as that for the poems and tales. Great controversies enliven biographical and critical approaches to Poe and his writings, as will be apparent in the following pages. Chapter 2 treats “Contexts.” Chapter 4 focuses on “Critical reception,” followed by a “Guide to further reading.”

From his time to ours, reception of Poe has been mixed. The persistent attempts to see his personal life and his writings as inextricably linked have been the informing spirit in many biographical accounts and in certain critical approaches, whether the topic encompasses just one work or a plurality. Poe himself initiated some of the misleading biographical accounts, first in the information he provided for Griswold's The Poets and Poetry of America (1842, often reprinted), a long-respected anthology of American verse. Even longer, the sketch in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum (1843) was based on materials supplied by Poe to Henry B. Hirst. Although that piece contains significantly revised texts for some of Poe's poems, it is not wholly reliable in sections of what might be thought factual biography. Poe also sent material that contained inaccuracies to James Russell Lowell for a biographical essay in the February 1845 Graham's Magazine. If these articles were favorable portrayals of Poe, Griswold's maligning portraiture in his obituary notice, signed “Ludwig,” of Poe in the 9 October 1849 New York Daily Tribune and in the expanded memoir in his edition of Poe's Works (1850–56) seemed to take a stronger hold on public opinion. Griswold's deviousness went long unsuspected because he did present what he considered to be the best texts for Poe's poems and fiction, though not for some of the “Literati” papers and for Poe's letters.

Because Poe was so steeped in western literary tradition, and since so much of his adult life was inextricably intertwined with the Anglo-American literary marketplace, one must not overlook those important influences upon his life and writings. A late comic tale “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.” (1844) chronicles a writer-editor's career, which might well be a précis of Poe's own experiences: “I have indeed ‘made history.’ From the bright epoch which I now record, my actions – my works – are the property of mankind. They are familiar to the world.” He goes on to tell how he acquired a literary periodical, and then a second and third, which he combined into one: The Rowdy-Dow, Lollipop, Hum-Drum and Goosetherumfoodle. Thingum continues: “Yes; I have made history. My fame is universal. It extends to the uttermost ends of the earth.” To answer the question, “What is genius? [assuming that genius in an author is necessary to become successful],” he responds: “it is but diligence after all.” Responding to an inquiry about of what such diligence consists, Thingum explains: “Look at me! – how I labored – how I toiled – how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word ‘ease’.”

Poe's canon contains some of the most widely known literary works in the world. His early desire to be a poet has been gratified many times over, if from no other source than the popularity of “The Raven,” one of the best-known poems in the English language, though many more reasons for such reputation exist. The early “To Helen (‘Helen, thy beauty is to me …),” “The Sleeper,” “The City in the Sea,” “The Coliseum,” “Sonnet – To Science,” “The Bells,” “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume” and “Eldorado”: all are well known. Poe's critical dicta are likewise familiar and repeatedly cited, e.g. that a “long poem” is a contradiction in terms, that poetry must have a distinctive “music,” that prose inclines more toward truth than poetry (beauty is the aim of poetry), that the brief prose tale is the greatest form in fiction, that the ideal reading time spans no more than an hour and a half. Poe's tales have, however, become his most significant legacy. “Ligeia,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “William Wilson,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “MS. Found in a Bottle,” “The Gold-Bug,” “The Purloined Letter,” “The Cask of Amontillado” remain favorites among makers of books, whether Poe's works themselves furnish the contents or whether one or another of these tales (or poems or critiques or The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym or Eureka, entire or excerpted) appears in selective compilations.

What has been termed the “enigma” of Edgar Allan Poe remains very much with us, even though he died in 1849. Some aspects of this enigma, which amount to slanting the truth, or to outright lies, originated with Poe himself. Others were supplied by persons who knew him, by others who supposed that they knew about his personal circumstances and career, or by still others who falsified the record because they took suspect “facts” at face value. Consequently, a “Poe legend” emerged, which retains widespread currency today. One may not exaggerate in remarking that a biography, brief or lengthy, of Poe is published nearly every year, although exceedingly few facts about his life and career have been discovered since the late 1930s/early 1940s, and much must remain speculative about that life. The most reliable biography continues to be Arthur H. Quinn's Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography, which dates from 1941, but which as a factual narrative account of Poe's life maintains its value.

An introductory book about Poe, such as this, requires sensible biographical treatment. Much in his life was anything but sensational; more often it became downright drudging, but drudgery did not suppress or distort Poe's amazing creativity. Whether personal circumstances provided the mainspring in his creativity may, however, be questionable. Poe is often associated with the South because he spent most of his first twenty years in and around Richmond, Virginia.