Poems and Tales (Classic Reprint)

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Poems and Tales The year 1809 marked the birth of many children destined to become famous, including in England Gladstone, Darwin, and Tennyson, and in America, Lincoln, Holmes, and Poe. The briefest and saddest among the lives of these children of genius was that of Edgar Allan Poe, which began in Boston on January 19th. His father was the son of a Revolutionary patriot, General David Poe, whom Lafayette honored by kissing the turf on his grave and saying, "Here rests a noble heart." This stern old aristocrat of Baltimore disowned his son, who not only left his law books for the stage, but also married a little English actress, Elizabeth Arnold. Edgar was the second of the three children born to this couple as their small troupe made its way from town to town along the Atlantic coast. Soon the father disappeared from the stage, and the brave little mother, stricken with consumption, fought hard to gain bread for her young family. Finally, late in November, 1811, the following card appeared in a Richmond newspaper: "On this night Mrs. Poe, lingering on a bed of disease and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance, and asks it, perhaps, for the last time. The generosity of a Richmond audience can need no other appeal." A week later the mother died, and the three children were thrown upon the charity of relatives and friends. Mrs. John Allan, the wife of a Richmond tobacco merchant, was attracted by the darkeyed, curly-haired Edgar and took the little waif into her home. When the lad was six, the Allans went to England on a business venture and placed him in a school at Stoke-Newington, a London suburb. Years later, in his tale of William Wilson, Poe pictured this old, irregular building, with its thick walls, its low ceilings, and winding passages. Here he passed five years, conjugating Latin verbs, learning French, and spending more pocket-money than he should. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.