Arthur Hobson Quinn

Renowned as the creator of the detective story and a master of horror, the author of "The Red Mask of Death," "The Black Cat," and "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe seems to have derived his success from suffering and to have suffered from his success. "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" have been read as signs of his personal obsessions, and "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Descent into the Maelstrom" as symptoms of his own mental collapse. Biographers have seldom resisted the opportunities to confuse the pathologies in the stories with the events in Poe's life. Against this tide of fancy, guesses, and amateur psychologizing, Arthur Hobson Quinn's biography devotes itself meticulously to facts. Based on exhaustive research in the Poe family archive, Quinn extracts the life from the legend, and describes how they both were distorted by prior biographies.

The Soul of America undertakes to trace the development of those spiritual values that have become an integral and permanent part of the American character. The first part of the book is devoted to an examination of the interrelationship between these spiritual values and historical events. The author then proceeds with a thorough analysis of those elements of the American spirit that are most characteristic today: democracy, efficiency, liberality, provincialism, individuality, humor, and vision. These interpretations are presented from an original viewpoint that ignores conventional opinions and outwork clichés, giving the reader new insight into the forces that shape American history. This book is valuable not only as a study of the past but also as a guide to understanding the contemporary scene and the course of America's future.