Edgar Allan Poe: A Life
Thoughtful and compassionate ...
Poe’s last major biographer, Kenneth Silverman, told much the same story with, I would argue, a bit more grace. Kopley, by contrast, can lapse into staidness ... By adhering so strictly to chronology, Kopley opens the door to discontinuities, awkward transitions and numbing repetition ...
To his credit, though, he’s a good sight fonder of his exasperating subject than Silverman was, and he does a fine job of recasting Poe’s alcoholism not as a moral problem but a medical one ... Where Kopley really excels is in connecting the life back to the work.
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It is well that a writer of such canonical importance should have a definitive biography, and Richard Kopley certainly seems the man to write it ... Brings to bear deep expertise and scholarship ... while Edgar Allan Poe will no doubt assist those in academia, the armchair Poe enthusiast is likely to find it tough going ... The problem is that Mr. Kopley sacrifices readability for thoroughness ... It is not that the details are uninteresting, but they make for fantastically choppy prose.
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A richly detailed, sympathetic portrait ... 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.
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