Darkness Becomes Bright

A wonderfully engaging account of Poe’s troubled life and work that is also a celebration of artistic cross-fertilization. Nimble, generous, brimming with insight, Ogden’s book captures the richness, the strangeness and the unexpected beauty to be found in our enduring fascination with the dark places of the soul – Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith
A gorgeous, spellbinding tale that blends criticism, biography, and carefully chosen moments of memoir to look fearlessly at what is most difficult – most perverse, disturbing, and, occasionally, beautiful – in art as well as life. This portrait of Poe will haunt you to the grave and beyond. – Christine Smallwood, author of The Life of the Mind
Emily Ogden brilliantly exhumes the beating heart of America’s darkest poet – Orlando Reade, author of What in Me is Dark
Emily Ogden does not flinch from the obscure and sometimes horrifying recesses of Poe’s psychosis. Her enthralling psychological portrait of the tormented artist is drawn with panache, and great compassion – Sue Prideaux, author of Wild Thing

Emily Ogden is the author of On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays and Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. Her writing has appeared in The Yale Review, Critical Inquiry, The New York Times, American Literature, the LA Review of Books Quarterly Journal, The Point, and Berfrois, among other publications. The recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and a Mellon Fellowship in the Columbia Society of Fellows, she is Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

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