The author of this biography of Poe, Susan Weiss, describes her work as follows: "I have not treated Poe in his character of poet or author, but confined myself to his private home-life, domestic and social, as I have heard it described by Poe's most intimate friends who knew him from infancyÑsome of them my own relativesÑand from my own brief knowledge of him in the last three months of his life."