The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City
How four American cities shaped Poe's life and writings

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American magazines, living in the cities that produced them. Scott Peeples chronicles Poe's rootless life in the cities, neighborhoods, and rooms where he lived and worked, exploring how each new place left its enduring mark on the writer and his craft.

Poe wrote short stories, poems, journalism, and editorials with urban readers in mind. He witnessed urban slavery up close, living and working within a few blocks of slave jails and auction houses in Richmond and among enslaved workers in Baltimore. In Philadelphia, he saw an expanding city struggling to contain its own violent propensities. At a time when suburbs were just beginning to offer an alternative to crowded city dwellings, he tried living cheaply on the then-rural Upper West Side of Manhattan, and later in what is now the Bronx. Poe's urban mysteries and claustrophobic tales of troubled minds and abused bodies reflect his experiences living among the soldiers, slaves, and immigrants of the American city.

Featuring evocative photographs by Michelle Van Parys, The Man of the Crowd challenges the popular conception of Poe as an isolated artist living in a world of his own imagination, detached from his physical surroundings. The Poe who emerges here is a man whose outlook and career were shaped by the cities where he lived, longing for a stable home.

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The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City
How four American cities shaped Poe's life and writings

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American magazines, living in the cities that produced them. Scott Peeples chronicles Poe's rootless life in the cities, neighborhoods, and rooms where he lived and worked, exploring how each new place left its enduring mark on the writer and his craft.

Poe wrote short stories, poems, journalism, and editorials with urban readers in mind. He witnessed urban slavery up close, living and working within a few blocks of slave jails and auction houses in Richmond and among enslaved workers in Baltimore. In Philadelphia, he saw an expanding city struggling to contain its own violent propensities. At a time when suburbs were just beginning to offer an alternative to crowded city dwellings, he tried living cheaply on the then-rural Upper West Side of Manhattan, and later in what is now the Bronx. Poe's urban mysteries and claustrophobic tales of troubled minds and abused bodies reflect his experiences living among the soldiers, slaves, and immigrants of the American city.

Featuring evocative photographs by Michelle Van Parys, The Man of the Crowd challenges the popular conception of Poe as an isolated artist living in a world of his own imagination, detached from his physical surroundings. The Poe who emerges here is a man whose outlook and career were shaped by the cities where he lived, longing for a stable home.

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The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City

The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City

The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City

The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City

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Overview

How four American cities shaped Poe's life and writings

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American magazines, living in the cities that produced them. Scott Peeples chronicles Poe's rootless life in the cities, neighborhoods, and rooms where he lived and worked, exploring how each new place left its enduring mark on the writer and his craft.

Poe wrote short stories, poems, journalism, and editorials with urban readers in mind. He witnessed urban slavery up close, living and working within a few blocks of slave jails and auction houses in Richmond and among enslaved workers in Baltimore. In Philadelphia, he saw an expanding city struggling to contain its own violent propensities. At a time when suburbs were just beginning to offer an alternative to crowded city dwellings, he tried living cheaply on the then-rural Upper West Side of Manhattan, and later in what is now the Bronx. Poe's urban mysteries and claustrophobic tales of troubled minds and abused bodies reflect his experiences living among the soldiers, slaves, and immigrants of the American city.

Featuring evocative photographs by Michelle Van Parys, The Man of the Crowd challenges the popular conception of Poe as an isolated artist living in a world of his own imagination, detached from his physical surroundings. The Poe who emerges here is a man whose outlook and career were shaped by the cities where he lived, longing for a stable home.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691182407
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 10/20/2020
Pages: 224
Sales rank: 301,037
Product dimensions: 5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Scott Peeples is professor of English at the College of Charleston. His books include The Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe and Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. Michelle Van Parys is professor of photography at the College of Charleston. Her books include The Way Out West: Desert Landscapes. Peeples and Van Parys both live in Charleston, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations ix

Introduction: No Place Like Home 1

Chapter 1 Richmond (1809-1827) 13

Chapter 2 Baltimore (1827-1838) 40

Chapter 3 Philadelphia (1838-1844) 76

Chapter 4 New York (1844-1848) 119

Chapter 5 In Transit (1848-1849) 158

Acknowledgments 181

Notes 183

Index 201

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Scott Peeples has plumbed the deep psychic landscape of Poe with passion and skill, bringing us back to his writings again and again with fresh insights. The Man of the Crowd is beautifully written and remarkably adroit. A major accomplishment."—Jay Parini, author of Robert Frost and Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal

"For all the Gothic pretensions of his fiction, Edgar Allan Poe spent his life in frantic negotiation with the realities of an urbanizing America. He hopscotched the Eastern Seaboard, fleeing debt while pursuing his dream of a truly literary American magazine. As Scott Peeples shows in this meticulously researched book, that dream was not to be; but the dynamism of Poe’s encounters with the American city lives on in some of his most prescient and distinguished work."—Shawn Rosenheim, coeditor of The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe

"This evocative and elegantly written book offers a fresh way of understanding Poe. The Man of the Crowd is a lively and compelling read."—Sandra Tomc, author of Industry and the Creative Mind: The Eccentric Writer in American Literature and Entertainment, 1790–1860

"Accessible and engaging. By focusing on the cities, neighborhoods, and streets that influenced Poe's personal life and writings, Scott Peeples offers a unique account of the famous author's search for professional success and a place to call home."—Paul Christian Jones, author of Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment

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