Publisher's Synopsis
Born in poverty at Boston, January 19, 1809, dying under painful circumstances atBaltimore, October 7, 1849, his whole literary career of scarcely fifteen years apitiful struggle for mere subsistence, his memory malignantly misrepresented byhis earliest biographer, Griswold, how completely has truth at last routed falsehoodand how magnificently has Poe come into his own. For "The Raven," first publishedin 1845, and, within a few months, read, recited and parodied wherever the Englishlanguage was spoken, the half-starved poet received $10! Less than a year later hisbrother poet, N. P. Willis, issued this touching appeal to the admirers of genius onbehalf of the neglected author, his dying wife and her devoted mother, then livingunder very straitened circumstances in a little cottage at Fordham, N. Y.:
