This book is aimed at advanced high school and lower-level college/university students. It consists of chapter 1, “Life,” in which the mythologies (often quite negative) that have grown up around Poe the person are avoided in favor of a factual account. Chapter 2, “Works,” provides coverage of Poe's works and their place in the literature of the world. After all, what initially gained Poe widespread attention was his critical writings, an irony since during his teens and early twenties he intensely wanted to be regarded as a poet. An additional irony is that Poe very deliberately turned to the writing of fiction, chiefly short stories, which appeared in newspapers and literary magazines, because such wares had wide circulation and usually paid sooner and better than the process of turning copy into books tended to do. As scholars have discovered, some of Poe's works were copied from their original sources by newspapers in distant locales, or were pirated by British periodicals. Poe's fiction and some of his poems continue to be read, to be sure, as his most appealing imaginative writings. Because his critical ideas appeared mainly in reviews instead of in a single, extended book, they have, with few exceptions, not attracted a readership so large as that for the poems and tales. Great controversies enliven biographical and critical approaches to Poe and his writings, as will be apparent in the following pages. Chapter 2 treats “Contexts.” Chapter 4 focuses on “Critical reception,” followed by a “Guide to further reading.”