Poe Writing/Writing Poe

Poe Writing/Writing Poe gathers a handful of “the finest papers” given at the First International Edgar Allan Poe Conference, held in Richmond, Virginia, in October 1999 (xiii). While the publication of a selection of essays presented fifteen years ago could risk being little more than a time capsule from that significant occasion, demonstrating the kinds of scholarly approaches to Poe and his work thriving at the end of the previous century, there is much of merit in the papers that Richard Kopley and Jana Argersinger have collected here. Though the volume lacks the ambitious purpose and singular focus of the more acclaimed collections of essays on Poe to appear in recent decades (e.g., Poe's Pym: Critical Explorations [1992]; The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe [1995]; Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race [2001]; Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture [2012]), it is to be applauded for its service...