He confused the record further by adopting assumed names: "Henri Le Rennent" as a teenager; "Edgar A. Perry" as a military enlistee; later, "Peter Prospero," "Sylvio Quarles," "E. S. T. Grey," "Thaddeus Perley," and "Lyttleton Barry."
Poe had much help in twisting the facts. Probably most damaging to how he has been remembered was a biographical sketch written by the Reverend Rufus Griswold, an editor appointed by Poe to be his literary executor. Poe had given Griswold a memorandum from which to write a biography. Upon Poe's death Griswold used the document to write an obituary in the New York Tribune. Shortly, he followed up with a fifty-page memoir, detailing Poe's life in very unjust terms. This sketch subsequently was used by many biographers, some already prejudiced adversely by tales of Poe's personal life, as well as by his unsavory literary subjects. Haldeen Braddy explains that Poe was maligned also because he was the "first great literary exponent in America of a way of life for the artist in opposition to Puritan tradition."
Poe's productivity belittles, if not belies, some of the claims of utter debauchery credited to him. Not many literary figures have left the written legacy of Poe.
This is a free page. This page contains 198 words. This
biography contains 8,594 words (approx. 29 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Edgar Allan Poe Access Pass.
