My sentiment agrees with the statement that Poe wrote what he wanted to.
What I mean to say is that his writing conveys the image which he created himself and therefore is, misleading or not, Poe's own self, (a part of himself, some aspect of himself and his character). Being that it is his own minds creation, Poe's writing tells us who he is as a person.
What of his personality and his personal experience led him to write what he wrote is what our mystery is to decipher.
I'm sure that if he was more concerned with what people wanted to read he would be much nicer, (as opposed to his mean critiques). So it seems to me that he used his position as a writer to publish what he wanted people to read and think about, and attribute to him. He wrote his name on and wanted credit for his own work, and he wrote the critiques himself, and signed them and published them, therefore we know he not only wanted his work to be read, he wanted to receive the recognition to his own name.
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It is funny that we get this impression of a dark, morose and gloomy man from stories when we have conflicting evidence that he was not what he writing may lead us to think. In my collection of Poe stories it talks about his personality as 'needy' and constantly trying to test his relationships with women by making himself more pitiful and even sickly. I think we cannot judge too closely by someones own writing themes. For an example, the man who did illustrations for Real Scary Stories (remember those? creepy!) is actually a very happy, jolly guy which is unlike his illustrations.
I think, as mentioned in some posts, that people, meaning the masses, were more attracted to the "poor Poe," or this morose, dark and Gothic personality we are all used to seeing and immediately think of when we think Poe. He knew this and wrote things accordingly.
I think of Jeremy Brett, an amazing British actor (may his soul rest in peace) who said, in playing Sherlock Holmes that he was, 'much too ebullient for the part,' and, 'had to hide an awful lot of me.'
Perhaps this is what happened with Poe and his younger work, and after losing Virginia, it ended up consuming him after a fashion.
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