Edgar Allan Poe's Biographies of Byron

This is the first systematic analysis of the seventeen tales of Poe's The Tales of the Folio Club. Before he wrote them, Poe had already established a reputation as a poet, and Lord Byron had influenced him more than any other writer. This close reading demonstrates how the Tales appear to be biographies of Byron in disguises, or even in a sense Byronic autobiographies, because their narrators and heroes often exhibit Byron's idiosyncratic mannerisms. The Tales prove to be seamless continuations of Poe's poetry, and major intertexts of Byron's life and works.