Produced by Barbara Tozier, Turgut Dincer, Bill Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[REPRODUCED FROM A PHOTO GIVEN TO MRS. WEISS BY POE THREE DAYS BEFORE HE LEFT RICHMOND]]
BROADWAY PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK 1907
_Title Page by Wm. Lincoln Hudson · Cover by Stephen G. Clow_
CHAPTER I. PAGE. First Glimpse of Edgar Poe 1
CHAPTER XII. A Pretty Girl with Auburn Hair Whom Poe Loved 70
CHAPTER XXVIII. A Morning with Poe--"The Raven" 184
In considering this book, will the reader especially note that it is not a "Life" or a "Biography" of Poe, of which too many already exist and to which nothing can be added after the exhaustive works of Woodbury and Prof. Harrison. I have not treated Poe in his character of poet or author, but confined myself to his private home-life, domestic and social, as I have heard it described by Poe's most intimate friends who knew him from infancy--some of them my own relatives--and from my own brief knowledge of him in the last three months of his life. The book may therefore be considered as a _supplement_ to the more complete "Lives and Biographies," showing Poe in a character as yet wholly unknown to the public, but which should be known in order to enable us to form a correct judgment of his character. I have corrected various misstatements of writers which, repeated by one from another, have come to be received as truth.
I have made no attempt at producing an artistic work, but have treated the subject as it demands, in a plain and practical manner with regard to facts apart from idealism of any kind.
It may be regarded as a somewhat curious coincidence that the first glimpse afforded us of Edgar Poe is on the authority of my own mother.
"In the summer of 1811 there was a fine company of players in Norfolk, and we children were as a special treat taken to see them. I remember the names of Mr. Placide, Mr. Green, Mr. Young and Mr. Poe, with their wives. I can recall Mrs. Young as a large, fair woman with golden hair; but my most distinct recollection is of Mrs. Poe. She was rather small, with a round, rosy, laughing face, short dark curls and beautiful large blue eyes. Her manner was gay and saucy, and the audience was continually applauding her. She appeared to me a young girl, but was past thirty, and had been twice married.