THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES, MARK DAWIDZIAK

A brilliant biography of Edgar Allan Poe that analyzes the life of the celebrated author from the perspective of his mysterious death and its possible causes.
Without a doubt, this is a true tale of horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at only forty years old, in a painful and utterly bizarre way that would have fit perfectly into his own horror stories. What was the cause of his premature death, and what happened to him during the three days it took to find him, delirious and "greatly distressed" in the streets of Baltimore, wearing clothes that didn't fit him and weren't his own? Poe, considered one of the most emblematic American writers, died in the most unsettling circumstances, reflecting the two literary genres he himself elevated to new heights throughout his career. Much speculation surrounds the cause of his death—from rabies and syphilis to suicide, alcoholism, and even murder—but many of these theories are based on a caricature of Poe: the brooding, goth scribbling his chilling masterpieces while drunk, hunched over a desk, with a raven perched on his shoulder. In a dual-timeline narrative that alternates between Poe's desperate final months and his short life, Mark Dawidziak reveals new facets of the enigmatic master of the macabre and proposes a shocking theory: that whatever killed him had actually been haunting him his entire life.

• Number of Pages: 384
• Binding: Hardcover
• Approximate dimensions: 21.5 x 2.8 x 13.5 cm