The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City. By Scott Peeples. With photographs by Michelle Van Parys. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. 2020. 200 pp. Cloth, $24.95; e-book available.
Constantly on the move throughout his relatively short life, Poe was never “uprooted” so much as he was perpetually “unrooted,” ever adapting to different urban centers and the mass audiences that populated them. This study, a “compact biography,” reconsiders Poe’s life and writings “in light of his itineracy and his relationship to the cities where he lived.” Peeples reattaches Poe to milieus whose import has long been depreciated by scholars, dedicating chronologically arranged chapters to Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and—for Poe’s final year and a half—to a period spent “In Transit.”
What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books. By Sheila Liming. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. 2020....
