Edgar Allan Poe Resources

The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore has an excellent website for examining Nineteenth Century documents about and written by Poe, including his own short autobiography, obituaries, correspondences, photographs and illustrations, official documents, etc. 

Often when discussing Poe's fiction and poetry, questions arise inquiring how his personal life, beliefs, and habits may have influenced his work. Poe is an excellent example of the difficulty of trying to discover a definitive meaning in a text based on clues from the author's personal life; he was often involved in spreading false rumors about himself, and even obscuring accurate biographical information in published documents. For example, in his own autobiography, which appeared at the beginning of a collection of his works, he provided the wrong birth year, along with several other inaccurate details.

"Edgar Allan Poe's Problematic Biography" is a short essay on the EAP Society site that details some of the larger myths about Poe, but there are resources across the site that show widespread misrepresentations about the infamous author. Debated still are the personal characteristics that inflect his writing: Was he a lifetime drunk or an occasional binger? Was he difficult to work with in the publishing industry, or a humble professional? Was he addicted to gambling? What really caused his death? The site has resources for exploring Poe's mysterious life and death.

The Poe Museum website also contains valuable resources for looking further into Poe's life and works. The site features biographical information and an online image collection of many of the museum's contents, including illustrations, personal correspondances, and other artifacts from his life.