Julian Symons' "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a … dependable guide to Poe's life. This book makes no claim to original research but offers a brisk synopsis of extant biographical knowledge, leavened by an experienced novelist's insights. Mr. Symons handles well the tangled narrative of Poe's troubled life, sensibly telling this tale without pausing to analyze Poe's stories. Criticism is deferred to Mr. Symons' last 70 pages….

Mr. Symons has mastered Poe's own milieu and renders well the social insecurity of the orphan raised among rich Virginians, his hard-scrabble life of drudging journalism, his fractious dealings with editors and minor writers. Mr. Symons properly emphasizes Poe's repeated and ever-blighted efforts to found his own literary review. (p. 15)

Mr. Symons cautions. "It would be idle to ask what reality lay beneath the masks he assumed. The reality was the sum of the parts he played." A more speculative reader of Poe may...