Poe: A Life Cut Short (Ackroyd's Brief Lives) - Hardcover

Ackroyd, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 038550800X ISBN 13: 9780385508001

Verlag: DOUBLEDAY & CO, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Gothic, mysterious, theatrical, fatally flawed, and dazzling, the life of Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s greatest and most versatile writers, is the ideal subject for Peter Ackroyd. Poe wrote lyrical poetry and macabre psychological melodramas; invented the first fictional detective; and produced pioneering works of science fiction and fantasy. His innovative style, images, and themes had a tremendous impact on European romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism, and continue to influence writers today.
In this essential addition to his canon of acclaimed biographies, Peter Ackroyd explores Poe’s literary accomplishments and legacy against the background of his erratic, dramatic, and sometimes sordid life. Ackroyd chronicles Poe’s difficult childhood, his bumpy academic and military careers, and his complex relationships with women, including his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin. He describes Poe’s much-written-about problems with gambling and alcohol with sympathy and insight, showing their connections to Poe’s childhood and the trials, as well as the triumphs, of his adult life. Ackroyd’s thoughtful, perceptive examinations of some of Poe’s most famous works shed new light on these classics and on the troubled and brilliant genius who created them.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

PETER ACKROYD is the biographer of William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More, and the author of the bestsellingLondon: The Biography. The subject of his previous Brief Life was Isaac Newton. He has won the Whitbread Biography Award, the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award (jointly) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and is the holder of a CBE for services to literature. He is the author of Thames: The Biography. His novels includeThe Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Hawksmoor (Guardian Fiction Prize), Chatterton (short-listed for the Booker Prize) and most recentlyThe Fall of Troy. He lives in London.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: DOUBLEDAY & CO
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• ISBN 10: 038550800X
• ISBN 13: 9780385508001
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 205
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar