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开 本: 32开纸 张: 胶版纸包 装: 精装是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9780385508001
“Ackroyd is like a literary spiritualist who summons up the
voices of the dead and encourages them to possess his writing….
[Poe] is as short and sharp as a flick-knife.”
–Daily Telegraph
“Ackroyd reveals a man ahead of his time, an extraordinary
genius…”
–Daily Express
“[a] deft, lively summary”
–The Spectator
“Ackroyd…makes the reader want to re-read Poe, and indeed to read
more of Ackroyd on Poe.”
–Scotland on Sunday
“Poe’s brilliant, erratic, abbreviated career stands to gain rather
than lose from the form of brief life patented by Ackroyd. A short
biography is not a long one shrunk. Instead of patiently
accumulated details, emotional complexity and architectural
shaping, it operates by lightening strikes, atmospheric colouring,
impressionistic techniques of concision and suggestion.”
–Observer
“With an adept ventriloquism Ackroyd weaves together contemporary
testimony with his own crisp narrative…a vivid recreation of the
life and sensibility that lay behind the work.”
–Evening Standard
“A dark subject, but a light read”
–Waterstone’s Books Quarterly
“admirably captures the heady mix of the esoteric, grotesque and
thoroughly modern in Poe.”
–Sunday Times
“Peter Ackroyd is the Micky Spillane of English letters; scarcely a
morning goes by without a brilliant new novel, history or biography
popgunning out into the shops from his uber-fecund pen… his
standards are high and his imagination and erudition greater than
most other shopfillers…. informative, still atmospheric, and from
time to time clearly the work of a very fine writer”
–Word
“Such a Hammer horror biography–a veritable car-crash of a life–is
tailor-made for a writer such as Ackroyd. He sustains its intensity
in these 160 pages”
–Sunday Telegraph
“an apt biographer for Poe”
–The Irish Times
“informative and well-written”
–The Herald
“succinct and elegant … illuminating”
–Times Literary Supplement
“[Poe] recounts Poe’s tumultuous and peripatetic personal
and professional life in a tone equal parts crisp and
Gothic.”
–Los Angeles Times
“Often insightful, sometimes stunning.’
–Kirkus Reviews
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.
List of Illustrations
1. The Victim
2. The Orphan
3. The Schoolboy
4. The Soldier
5. The Journalist
6. The Editor
7. The Man Who Never Smiled
8. The Bird
9. The Scandal
10. The Women
11. The Last Year
Poe’s Principal Publications
Bibliography
Index
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