Edgar Allan Poe His Life & Legacy (pgs 101-162)

Summary
Poe had decided to move to Philadelphia and started writing lyric poetry and short stories. These are some of the his great short fiction stories "Leigeia" "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Man of the Crowd", he was able to bring out his first book of stories. When Poe first started writing his short stories the were full of sadness and violence, this reflected off on how Poe was feeling he was very sad because of he wife sickness. The story "Leigeia" was about a powerful and beautiful women who returns from the dead, people said this was the best story Poe had ever written. Later on Poe had failed to achieve a popular success with "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" which was bad for Poe because if it was successful he would be able to earned the money. Poe did not make a lot of money ever since he left the Messenger in Baltimore, he was able to get an editorial job at Burton's where he got his own outlet for his stories. Poe's writing was very successful in Burton's magazine, Burton and Poe worked together but Burton would get paid 3 to 4 thousand dollars a year, while Poe who did most of the work would only get paid 5 hundred dollars a year. This got Poe very angry with Burton, so Poe became very abusive and would stomp out of office this cause him to almost lose his job. Edgar Allan Poe having these disagreements with Burton he began drinking again and sometimes they will find him drunk on the streets. Finally leaving Burton, Poe found another magazine company called Graham he had more control where he got credited for writing his stories they became popular like "The Murders in Rue Morgue." Poe dedicated stories to his sick wife the most popular was "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart." The Graham's magazine was not going so good because he was still paid low salary and he needed more money to support his family. Edgar Allan Poe being the first American writer he wanted to make his own magazine so he decided to move to New York to start it.

Quotation
When Poe wrote his stories about dead woman he believed, "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world, (Ugly women, dead or alive, were presumably not worth a story.) But the slow, prolonged death of a beautiful woman was to Poe even more moving" (Meyers 103).

Reaction
Poe had believed this when he had wrote the story "Liegeia" and I find this to be true sometimes because when I read books or watch movies about dead women who returned from the dead they are describe as very beautiful the book or movie is very interesting. I can see that maybe for Poe it was easier to write about a beautiful woman since through most of his life women that he loved died. I thought of it as Poe wrote this type of story because he wanted those women that died to come back from the died, and when Poe would describe these women it seem to me that they were very beautiful. Now when Poe says that ugly women are not worth a story, I think he means that if you are going to write a story about a woman it should be about a woman that you think is beautiful. When the story is written about that person you think is beautiful it comes out a better story then for someone you really did not care about. It was better for Poe to write a story about a beautiful woman that came back from the dead because readers would be more interested in reading that type of book. It is not like Poe said a pretty woman, but it sounds more appealing to read a beautiful woman, so with Poe's belief I agree with it that writing about someone you think is beautiful is worth it than writing about someone you do not see that beauty in them.