An attempt to apply the psychoanalytic principles to the life of an individual who has been dead for practically three-quarters of a century with the idea of throwing light upon his behavior and his works may seem as futile, and in fact far more difficult, as an attempt to psychoanalyze a patient by means of correspondence, but Mr. Krutch in his psychological biography of Edgar Allan Poe has shown that it is not only possible, but has done it in such a manner as to explain many of the