A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe

This one took me a little bit to get through. I wanted to switch things up and read this biography of Edgar Allan Poe, but I didn’t expect it to be such a slow read for me.

I think that part of that reason is that the author jumps between Poe’s early days and his final days. Normally multiple narrators and time jumps don’t make things challenging, but I think in a biography, I expect chronological order, not time jumps, but to each their own.

One of the most interesting aspects of this biography though is that it seems that no one really knows what kind of life Edgar Allan Poe truly lead. Sure there are speculations and letters, but are the sources reliable? Trustworthy? It’s obvious in this biography, that perhaps Poe was good at making friends and as quick as he made friends, he lost them. He had enemies that were so quick to slander his name, even in death. And his cause of death? This truly remains a mystery. A quote from Baltimore Poe scholar, Jeff Jerome, “Everyone has an opinion, and that opinion is the correct one, and everyone else is wrong. I think we now have more than twenty-two current theories, and a new one shows up every year.”

The one thing that doesn’t remain a mystery? How great of an author Edgar Allan Poe was and remains to be to this day.