Category Archives: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft: A Titan of Terror

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This video is an excellent introduction to the life, work, and legacy of H. P. Lovecraft. As much as I’ve read about this tragic, talented man, it managed to surprise me with both biographical and career tidbits.

Here’s something I didn’t know: August Derleth, the editor chiefly responsible for publicizing Lovecraft after the writer’s death, had his stories translated and published overseas. Post-WWI French intellectuals, already admirers of Edgar Allan Poe, practically devoured everything Lovecraft had authored. That, of course, is how Michel Houellebecq “discovered” Lovecraft.

I’m definitely looking forward to future videos from Biographics. Confession: It’s the first YouTube channel I’ve subscribed to.

Edgar Allan Poe, Fiction, Writing

BEST FICTION AND WRITING BLOGS

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Edgar Allan Poe

The best fiction and writing blog posts from around the ‘net, all guaranteed to make you a literary legend. Compiled by ed.

Diana Peach – World-building: From Imagination to Reality
Evan DeHaven – The Stupidity of Removing Shakespeare
D. E. Haggerty – Tips for making your blog title catchy
Angie Dokos – The Best Things About Reading
Aquileana – Psychopomps in Mythology
Dan Alatorre – Finish One Story, Don’t Chase Ten
Edgar Allan Poe– How to write a short story

Detective Fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, Horror

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

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Edgar Alan Poe

Sean Fitzgerald offers a sympathetic evaluation of the great-great granddaddy of detective fiction, with revealing insights into Poe’s other work:

Edgar Allan Poe’s “great continuous convulsion” speaks very naturally and very intensely to the adolescent spirit: passion, love, hatred, murder, primal desires and fears, a desperate pursuit for meaning in a corrupt world. The tales of Edgar Allan Poe capture a universal adolescent essence, and few things deserve to be taken as seriously as adolescence. Adolescence is a search. Adulthood is dealing with the discovery.

What Fitzgerald says about Poe is also true of other works of speculative fiction. Though dismissed by some as frivolous, if not lowbrow, speculative fiction often brilliantly tackles difficult, universal issues in a way that is both entertaining and enlightening. Poe was a pioneer of the genre who blazed the trail for many others, including H.P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Stephen King.