Author: Scott Peeples, with photographs by Michelle van Parys

Publisher: Princeton University Press

ISBN: 9780691182407

Scott Peeples’ The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City focuses on the life that the great writer of tales of mystery and the macabre (as well as poet, editor and literary critic) lived primarily in the four key north-eastern American cities of Richmond (1809–1827), Baltimore (1827–1838), Philadelphia (1838–1844) and New York (1844–1848). The text is supported by multiple black-and-white photos of the places that Poe most frequented. Largely focusing on the man and his literary and somewhat risqué lifestyle, Peeples reveals many of the author’s weaknesses as well as his triumphs (which always tended to be undermined by his own relatively undisciplined behavior.) Any progress that he made tended to be dogged by his penchant for drink (which might also have contributed to his relatively early death.

Poe’s troubled relationships with fellow writers and his oft acerbic reviews of their work are discussed in detail, including his waging of a relatively long-lasting battle of words against some, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which led to him falling in and out of favor with the social circles of his day. His conflicting attitude towards women, whom he tended, on the whole, to regard as a necessary evil is also covered in some depth. Poe’s pivotal involvement with his young wife and her mother, which dominated the central portion of his life, is shown as having both aided and hindered his work, as the former’s illness distracted him at times from being a more prolific author than he was.

Description of the social conditions of the time, including the institution of slavery and the poor conditions under which the black population lived, form a key undercurrent in The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City. The squalid situation in which many people lived in the first half of the nineteenth century inevitably impacted on Poe’s work, especially as he himself was never comfortably off, despite the fame that certain of his work, like “The Raven,” achieved. His own need to be close to the more prominent publishing houses demanded that he spend much time in the city, with his impoverished circumstances meaning that he was nearly always having to look for more work and to hustle for financial support. The times that he spent in relative seclusion, on the outskirts of cities that were too expensive for him to live a more centralized lifestyle, might have stimulated his output, but they certainly did not facilitate his playing a prominent ongoing part in the socially acceptable quarters of his time. 

Providing insightful coverage of Poe’s career from start to finish, The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City covers all of his major work in some detail. Some reference is also made to his more minor work, so that, overall, the work is comprehensive and should serve as an aid both to the scholar and to the average reader who is attracted by his more popular writings to learn about how he came to write especially his masterpieces. Extremely well-researched, as indicated by the multiple annotations, this biographical account most definitely is, and by an expert in the field, as Scott Peeples has a string of other literary works to his credit, including two other books on Poe, being The Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe, which reveals the influence of Poe during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe¸ which anthology of writing on all aspects of Poe's life, work and writing Peeples co-edited with the renowned J. Gerald Kennedy.