The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe

This book is Julian Symons's study of the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. It is divided into two parts: the first part being a short biography of Poe and the second part being a concise critical analysis. Nearly three-fourths of the book is biography. Symons provides information about Poe's parents, his abysmal relationship with his foster father, his work on various literary journals, his adult relationships (including his marriage, his complicated relationship with his aunt/mother-in-law and his series of emotional entanglements surrounding and following the death of his wife), his lifelong poverty, his fame during his lifetime, his death and the post-mortem character assassination by his literary executor, Rufus Griswold. Symon's biography is notable for its psychological profile of Poe. Symons engages in much psychological speculation to create a character behind the poems and tales. For example, Symons makes much of Poe's possibly hereditary talent for drama and acting, and attributes much of Poe's hysteria, compulsion for hoaxes and creative energy to the dramatic flair in Poe's personality. Symons also makes much of Poe's childhood and adolescence. By early adulthood Poe had been mistreated and abandoned by every father figure in his life and had lost every mother figure to early death, thus setting the stage for adult relationships that were destined to fail. And Symons goes on a psychoanalytical hayride with Poe's marital arrangement - an easy target for the armchair psychoanalyst. While living with his aunt during his early twenties, Poe developed an emotional dependence upon his pre-adolescent cousin, Virginia, whom he thought of as his little sister and, indeed, affectionately called Sister and Sissie. He convinced his aunt to allow him to marry the girl by promising not to consummate the marriage until she reached sexual maturity. Poe's aunt/mother-in-law lived with the Poes throughout the marriage and continued to be involved with and dependent upon Poe until his death. Symons elaborates on the brother-sister-mother overtones of the arrangement at length. The psychoanalysis continues in Symon's critical study of Poe's works. Symons postulates that many of the narrators in Poe's horror tales are images of Poe himself, and are Poe's attempt to work out his psychological issues and demons. Poe had a highly logical intellect and yet was a visionary, given to flights of fantasy. Symons sees Poe as an inwardly-tortured man who had to keep writing poems and tales in order to maintain a semblance of sanity and balance. Symons's critical study includes in-depth analysis of several tales and a shallow critique of Eureka (a work which deserves greater critical attention). Symons also provides an overview of critical approaches and schools of thought on Poe's continuing influence on literature. This is a very readable, fascinating and enjoyable study. However, it would have been much more valuable to Poe scholars and s

Too bad this book is out of print. One of England's most respected mystery writers of the 20th century and a decent critic, Julian Symons, envisioned this much as today's "Penguin Short Lives" series is conceived: to nail a prominent life in a swift moving narrative with style and critical thinking. He originally published it in 1978 for an English audience but it serves Americans very well. In fact, the absence of American academic obfuscation and the neutrality of perspective are extremely refreshing. He has moved an analysis of Poe's criticism, poetry and fiction, as well as his enduring reputation, to the back of the book to make for an uninterrupted biographical narrative up front. Poe is hard on any biographer. He was hard on his contemporaries for that matter. He was known to embroider his own back story, and he inspired enough animosity among former colleagues that at least one, his literary executor, went to great lengths to rewrite Poe's life most unflatteringly. Symons performs a yeoman's job of getting down to the facts and reconciling a complex personality whose facets often opposed one another. He critiques the popular Freudian view of Poe and clears up a number of questions about his marriage to a young first cousin. Most importantly, he affirms Poe's place in literary history and provides a fascinating look at early American literary culture.