Do you know which book Edgar Allan Poe liked the most to do and/or simply, the one he liked very much? If you do, please, send me an answer right away (...) because I really need these informations for his biography (class project).

Thank you very much,

Mel

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2000

Answers

Mel,

Presuming your question refers to the books of which Poe was the author, it would be most difficult to identify any particular one of them as his favorite and it would be a purely subjective and somewhat wasteful exercise. Most of these books were collections of his poetry or prose of which, I believe, there were four. These are:

Tamerlane and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Boston 1827

Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Baltimore 1829

Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, New York 1831

The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, New York 1845

However, as a best guess for his favorite work of literature for which he was the author, I would imagine that his epic essay, Eureka must be considered as important, if not to literary history, then at the least, certainly to Poe himself. Written throughout 1847 and printed in June 1848, Eureka is a treatise on the creation/dissolution of all matter; the ultimate reunion of all matter into a single particle and the relationship between the spiritual and material universe. In a letter to an acquaintance, Poe clarified his General Proposition as: Because Nothing was  therefore All Things are. (Edgar Allan Poe  A Critical Biography, Arthur H. Quinn, John Hopkins edition 1998, pg 542).

If your question refers to books by authors other than himself, I would not venture to speculate. However, I would guess that the author would be either William Shakespeare, Coleridge, John Milton, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, or perhaps even Charles Dickens. Poe seems to have been especially taken by Coleridge.

Regards,

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2000