Israfel poe biography

by Hervey Allen. New York: George H.Doran Co. Doran Co. 1926. 8vo. 2 vols. xx+408+486 pp. Illus. $10.00.

BIOGRAPHY seems to be becoming more and more a matter of background. We see eminent men, not so much as errant examples of genius or individuality, but as the product of their surroundings and of their time, influenced, in their strength and in their weakness both, by the numerous and complicated currents of thought and feeling that manifest themselves in the general movement of the age.

It is in this spirit that Mr. Allen has dealt with the life of Poe, and has endeavored to make it clear that not only much of his achievement but much of his limitation and erratic failure was connected with the conditions under which he lived and worked. The early background of Richmond and the complicated relations with the Allans are developed to a point far beyond anything possible hitherto, since Mr. Allen has had access to documents not used by previous biographers. The life at the University, in the army, at West Point, and the confused goings and comings between Baltimore, Philadelphi

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