The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

This biography looks at the life of Edgar Allan Poe, highlighting his infatuation and feuds with science, while also flirting with snake-oil salesmen, mystics, and avant-garde thinkers. Much of what is known about the writer has to do with his dark writing, pioneering detective fiction, and his ability to craft haunting atmospheres. The book contends that his flirting with science and the metaphysical renders Poe science fiction writer — caught between milieux that converged and often contradicted themselves. To cite a newspaper of his time, “Mr. Poe is not merely a man of science—not merely a poet—not merely a man of letters. He is all combined; and perhaps he is something more”. He even would come to share a university lecture that would come inspire Albert Einstein himself. A brilliant figure of contradictions, this book reveals how these very contradictions would be one of the things that would haunt the writer.

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