Following Edgar Allan Poe's death in 1849, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Maria Clemm, was persuaded to name Rufus Wilmot Griswold as Poe's literary executor. The two men had famously disliked each other, but Griswold promised Mrs. Clemm a share of the royalties from the collection of Poe's works that he envisioned, a thing that overcame any misgivings she might have had. Griswold prefaced the four volume collection with a memoir intended to forever blackened...