When done well, the brief life gives its audience an intellectually plausible take on a famous person that’s also fun to read. Still, the form’s chief advantage — its brevity — cannot help leaving key ...

Edgar Allan Poe does not suffer from a shortage of biographers, and Richard Kopley pays tribute to two of them: Arthur Hobson Quinn and Kenneth Silverman. So, what is there to add? The short answer, ...

Edgar Allan Poe wrote more comedies and satires than horror stories and is credited with inventing the detective genre. A rival colleague, Rufus Griswold, created the lasting myth that Poe was a ...

To borrow a current idiom, Edgar Allan Poe was a lot. Which means, almost syllogistically, that any biography of him — even one as thoughtful and compassionate as Richard Kopley’s “Edgar Allan Poe” — ...

This story is a collaboration with Biography.com. Edgar Allan Poe, the man who invented the detective story, saved his most unsolvable mystery for last: the cause of his own untimely death. If any ...