It is always profitable to read about Poe's life while reading his works because a clear line can be drawn from the events in his life, through his particular phobias and obsessions, and straight to the disturbing, supernatural poems and tales that he wrote. Some of the facts of his life are obscure to us today because the man he chose to be his literary executor and biographer, Rufus Griswold, is known to have hated Poe, and he made up malicious facts in his "official" biography after he died. We do know that Poe's parents were actors; his mother was quite famous and his father a law student who joined the acting troupe when he married her. Poe was born in 1809 when they were playing the Boston Theatre. Some sources say that his parents had two more children and some say that his father deserted the...