Only exaggerating a little, Arthur Conan Doyle said "each of Poe's stories is a root from which a whole literature has developed". Crime fiction began with his Parisian sleuth Dupin, model for Holmes and Poirot; and he was also a pioneer in SF, fantasy and horror, wrote classic comic hoaxes, and was arguably the first significant American poet. Besides Conan Doyle, his admirers included Baudelaire, Yeats, Dostoevsky and Verne. Yet his 22-year career was one of almost unbroken misery, maudlin boozing and disastrous loves that followed his wife Virginia's death. Barnes ably pleads his case where posterity has been cruel, insisting Virginia was no exploited child bride and her husband no lifelong drunk - just someone who timed his bingeing terribly, as when he was due to meet President Tyler about a government job. Marking the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth, his biography makes unusually good use of the author's letters. But it fails to crack the conundrum of how such an astonishing literary legacy emerged from such a chaotic life.