Trent, W. P. Edgar Allan Poe (announced in E. M. L. Ser.).
Wendell, Barrett. Stelligeri and Other Essays. 1893.
Whitty, J. H. Memoir in edition of Poe’s Poems. 1911.
Woodberry, G. E. America in Literature, chap. iv. 1908.
TOPICS AND PROBLEMS
Read “The Purloined Letter” and compare it as a detective story with any one of Conan Doyle’s detections of theft.
Read the introductions of ten or twelve stories for Poe’s method of establishing the dominant mood.
Apply the formula presented in “The Philosophy of Composition” to “Annabel Lee” and to any of Poe’s best-known prose tales.
No intelligent estimate of Poe can be reached without reading his two analytical essays, “The Philosophy of Composition” and “The Poetic Principle.”
Compare the “I” in Poe with the “I” in Whitman. Read “William Wilson” and “The Man in the Crowd,” which are felt to have more of autobiography in them than any others.