

E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Josephine Paolucci, and
the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net/)



THE DREAMER

A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe

by

MARY NEWTON STANARD
(Author of "The Story of Bacon's Rebellion")







     "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which
     escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions
     they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to
     find they have been upon the verge of the great secret."

     --_Edgar Allan Poe, in "Eleanora"_




Richmond, Virginia
The Bell Book and Stationery Company
1909
Copyright 1909
By Mary Newton Stanard



[Illustration: THE HERMITAGE PRESS
Bindery of L.H. Jenkins
Richmond, Va.]




    In the Sacred Memory
          of
    My Father and Mother





TO THE READER


This study of Edgar Allan Poe, poet and man, is simply an attempt to
make something like a finished picture of the shadowy sketch the
biographers, hampered by the limitations of proved fact, must, at best,
give us.

To this end I have used the story-teller's license to present the facts
in picturesque form. Yet I believe I have told a true story--true to the
spirit if not to the letter--for I think I have made Poe and the other
persons of the drama do nothing they may not have done, say nothing they
may not have said, feel nothing they may not have felt. In many
instances the opinions, and even the words I have placed in Poe's mouth
are his own--found in his published works or his letters.

I owe much, of course