May, John 1942–

PERSONAL: Born 1942; married. Education: Bennington College, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Greensboro, NC. Office—Bonaventure, Inc., 2007 Yanceyville St., Ste. 227, Greensboro, NC 27405. Agent—Christy Fletcher, Fletcher & Parry, The Carriage House, 121 East 17th St., New York, NY 10003.

CAREER: Bonaventure Co., Greensboro, NC, currently managing partner. Former chair of board of directors, University of North Carolina-Greensboro Friends of the Library.

WRITINGS:

Poe and Fanny (novel), Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: John May's first novel, Poe and Fanny, covers a year in the life of the mercurial genius Edgar Allan Poe. The year is 1845, and Poe is living in New York City with his ailing wife and mother-in-law. Though struggling to make a living, Poe becomes a favorite in posh salons after his poem "The Raven" is published. It is at one such gathering that he meets Frances S. Osgood, a popular poet of the day. The novel recounts their brief affair, and is based on evidence gathered from their subsequent poems and from sparse anecdotes. As Nancy Pate noted in the Washington Post, May's "story is fiction … but it is based on fact."

May's novel immerses the reader in "minutiae from 1840s New York," according to Elizabeth Gold in the Washington Post Book World. In addition to an unsparing portrait of Poe, the author describes the publishing industry of the time, the mores of polite society, and the dire financial difficulties the Poe family faced—partly due to Edgar's drinking. A Publishers Weekly reviewer liked "the glimpses of colorful pre-Civil War New York and its personages," while Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman praised May's "enchanting protagonist" Fanny Osgood. Seaman concluded that Poe and Fanny is "compulsively readable … ingenious and sensitive … impeccably literary and unabashedly romantic."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2004, Donna Seaman, review of Poe and Fanny, p. 1424.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2004, review of Poe and Fanny, p. 104.

Library Journal, April 1, 2004, Beth E. Andersen, review of Poe and Fanny, p. 123.

Publishers Weekly, April 12, 2004, review of Poe and Fanny, p. 38.

Washington Post, April 11, 2004, Nancy Pate, "In New Novels, Edgar Allan Poe Lives Again," p. D7.

Washington Post Book World, May 30, 2004, Elizabeth Gold, "New Novels of Love and Melancholy from Poe's New York to Jiang's China," p. 13.