Arthur Hobson Quinn (1875–1960)

I found this biography to be an excellent description of Poe’s life. Not a student of American Literature or Poetry, I simply wanted to know about Poe beyond what I imagined having read only a few of his poems and tales. I don’t speak as an authority. I’m glad to have selected this particular biography as I was entirely unaware how many others have written about Poe’s life and how distorted some or much of it is. I might have a very different understanding of Poe had I chosen a different biographer. Beginning with his first biographer, Griswold, Quinn provides evidence Griswold modified some of Poe’s letters in order that Poe would indict himself in support of Griswold’s claims. Among other distortions, these forgeries provided the germ giving credence to distorted claims of subsequent biographers. Saying this, I have to accept and believe what Quinn writes, consequently, I feel no reason to doubt his findings and portrayal of the man. That Quinn’s writing itself is scholarly requires an occasional pause to reread the last sentence or paragraph to understand his word choices and to grasp its meaning. If there is but one Poe biography one wishes to read, this is it.… (plus d'informations)

Thomas Godfrey, Royall Tyler, William Dunlap, James Nelson Barker, John Howard Payne, Washington Irving, George Washington Parke Custis, Robert Montgomery Bird, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie, George Henry Boker, Dion Bouciacault, Joseph Jefferson, Steele MacKaye, Bronson Howard, James A. Herne, William Gillette, David Belasco, John Luther Long, Clyde Fitch, Langdon Mitchell, Augustus Thomas, William Vaughn Moody, Percy MacKaye, Edward Sheldon, Rachel Crothers, Eugene O'Neill, Lula Vollmer, Sidney Howard, Philip Barry,… (plus d'informations)

My reactions to reading this biography in 2005.

I believe this is still considered the definitive biography of Poe. And it is an excellent biography if you engaged in some sort of research project where you want to know precisely what Poe was doing on a particular day. (All right, that’s an exaggeration. Poe’s life is not heavily documented with diaries or letters, so there are a lot of days we don’t know what he was up to.)

In fact, one of the problems with this book is, for some one casually curious about Poe and reading this as their first Poe biography, Quinn makes only passing references to the Poe legends and myths he’s out to debunk. So, if you haven’t read those early biographies (which I haven’t), you don’t know the details of Poe’s alleged trips in adulthood to Europe or Greece, the alleged courtships and affairs. In fact, you don’t get a great sense of Poe the man here.

To his credit, Quinn almost entirely avoids any psychological analysis (certainly Freud isn’t brought to bear) except to speculate that Poe’s temper and penchant for drink, his “imp of the perverse” may have been a personality trait inherited from his father. And Quinn addresses the questions of Poe’s drinking, drug use, and romantic affairs as well as his relations with other writers and editors and his beloved cousin-wife Virginia and aunt-mother-in-law Mrs. Clemm. Poe seems to have had some sort of metabolic dysfunction when it came to drinking alcohol. More than one person noted that many people could drink bottles of wine and not get the reputation for being the drunk that Poe had. Poe, on the other, seemed to be literally drunk for days on a single glass of wine. Yet, especially in the trying times when Virginia was near death several times from the tuberculosis that killed her, Poe’s nervousness and despair made him turn to liquor. (Poe seems never to have been able to acknowledge Virginia's tuberculosis -- always claiming she had burst a blood vessel singing.). He didn’t make a good impression on an interview for a Federal job since he drank before it out of nervousness. On the other hand, he was also said by those who personally worked with him when he was an editor on various publication to be conscientious, diligent, worked long hours, and was almost always sober.

There can be no question as to his devotion to Virginia and her mother though, as evidence of either a maniac nature or an unpleasant tendency to lie about his past (particularly his army experience), he implied in a letter to Sarah Whitman, a Providence poet with whom he conducted what Quinn calls a “literary courtship”, that he thew away a fortune to marry Virginia and married her for “another’s happiness” and not his. That claim is belied by his actions and letters when married to Virginia.

Whitman and Poe almost got married, but the wedding was called off at the last minute. Quinn also goes into Poe’s relationship, platonic but a deep friendship -- something Poe seems to have found only with women -- with the married Annie Richmond. After Virginia died, he courted Sarah Shelton neé Sarah Elmira Royster, his first love, when he returned to Richmond. She was then a wealthy widow though the relationships seems to have been picked up somewhat less than seriously by Mrs. Shelton.

Quinn regards Poe’s poetry as his greatest accomplishment, and, when he does discuss Poe’s works, it is the poetry he spends the most time with usually. Quinn says Poe produced highly original and effective poems even though his written understanding of the theory and history of English verse was not very good. The one exception is the long chapter on Poe’s "Eureka".

To be sure, Poe thought it his supreme work, so it needs some discussion. Quinn seems to think it’s a highly significant work, presaging the understanding of modern physics. To his credit, though, he asked Sir Arthur Eddington and another astronomer, Charles P. Olivier to comment how scientifically prescient Poe was. I think Eddington gets it right when he says "Eureka" is a work of crank science though it obviously shows that Poe kept up with the science, particularly astronomy, of his day. (But, then, cranks are often conversant with the science of their day.)

I’m sure Quinn’s biggest contribution to Poe scholarship was that he was the first to extensively document the forgeries and lies of Poe’s maliciously clever literary executor, the Reverend Rufus Griswold. Griswold was quite cunning in his blackening of Poe’s character and the estimation of his work. (Quinn doesn’t think much of the mere gruesomeness in Poe’s work.) Poe and Griswold had business and literary dealings together and became enemies. Griswold was something of a hack who published anthologies and directories of contemporary writers. Poe thought they had made up. Obviously, Griswold didn’t think so though he pretended to be Poe’s friend.

Quinn also talks about Poe’s unpleasant obsession with alleging plagiarism in other’s writings (and was accused of it himself with The Conchologist’s First Book, a textbook he worked on). After his death, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was quite charitable in his comments on Poe given that Poe had unfairly accused him of plagiarism.

Quinn does show that Poe, on occasion, did puff up the literary reputation of some poet who paid him. Usually he was an honest critic, but he would prostitute himself to materially provide for Virginia and Mrs. Clemm. Quinn emphasizes Poe’s charisma and deals with the success of Poe’s “The Raven” and the public readings he did of it. Poe seemed to have carried on a feud with the writers of his birth city, Boston, calling them Frogpondians.… (plus d'informations)