POE'S WORKS AND LIFE (downloadable books)

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who were itinerant actors. His father David Poe Jr. died probably in 1810 and his mother Elizabeth Hopkins Poe in 1811, leaving three children, of whom William died young and Rosalie ultimately lost her mind. Edgar was taken into the home of a Richmond merchant John Allan and brought up partly in England (1815-20), where he attended Manor School at Stoke Newington. Never legally adopted, Poe took Allan's name for his middle name. Poe suffered from bouts of depression and madness, and he attempted suicide in 1848. In September the following year he disappeared for three days after a drink at a birthday party and on his way to visit his new fiancée in Richmond. He turned up in delirious condition in Baltimore gutter and died on October 7, 1849.

WORKS:

THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (DOWNLOAD)

This is the first of three Poe's stories featuring his famous detective, C. Auguste Dupin. The setting is Paris, and the story goes on mainly at night and in Dupin's apartments. This leaves the reader with a sense of darkness and a little claustrophobia, adding to Poe's great style. Dupin is able to solve the murders of two women by just visiting the crime scene once and thinking a lot. The kind of solution given to the murders may seem a little simple, but we have to remember that this may be considered one of the first "detective stories" of all times. Conan Doyle was obviously inspired in some parts of Dupin's character and reasoning to create Sherlock Holmes. And the noir atmosphere is, as always, great. This is, appearently, not a story to be seen as "horror", but proves that Poe is one of the great authors of all time.

THE OVAL PORTRAIT (DOWNLOAD)

This work is an allegory which reveals how the public sphere operates on representation of the individual which takes autonomy away from the individual and leads to negation or death. In particular, it shows how women in Poe's time were barred from the public sphere altogether and were thus denied power and identity. Poe wanted to do more than entertain people; he wanted to influence how people thought, or how they perceived the world. Poe was mental subterranean, and wanted to reach the unconscious mind, through the doorway of fear.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE LIFE AND WORKS

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804.

His father was a sea captain and descendent of John Hawthorne, one of the judges in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. He died when the young Nathaniel was four year old. Hawthorne grew up in seclusion with his widowed mother - and for the rest of her life they relied on each other for emotional solace. Between the years 1825 and 1836 Hawthorne worked as a writer and contributor to periodicals. He married in 1842 Sophia Peabody, an active participant in the Transcendentalist movement, and settled with her in Concord. A growing family and mounting debts compelled their return to Salem. Hawthorne was unable to earn a living as a writer and in 1846 he was appointed surveyor of the Port of Salem, where he worked for three years. Hawthorne died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on May 18th, 1864.

His main works:

THE SCARLET LETTER (downloadable book)
Drama
The main action of The Scarlet Letter, the illicit love affair of Hester Prynne with the Reverend Arhur Dimmesdale and the birth of their child Pearl, takes place before the book opens. In Puritan New England, Hester, the mother of an illegitimate child, wears the scarlet A (for adulteress, named in the book by this initial) for years rather than reveal that her lover was the saintly young village minister. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, proceeds to torment the guiltstricken man, who confesses his adultery before dying in Hester's arms. Hester plans to take her daughter Pearl to Europe to begin a new life.


THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES (downloadable book)
Fiction
An evil house, cursed through the centuries by a man who was hanged for witchcraft, is haunted by the ghosts of its sinful dead, wracked by the fear of its frightened living. Written as a follow-up to "The Scarlet Letter", The House of the Seven Gables is truly a masterful blending of the actual and the imaginary.