The Dreamer, by Mary Newton Stanard. Published 1909. A biography of Poe, “true to the spirit if not to the letter.”
Mary Newton Stanard (1865-1929) wrote several books on Virginia history.
An excerpt:
Suddenly his heart stopped. The deep, sweet, hollow, ghostlike voice of the bell in the steeple, tolling for a funeral, was borne to his ears. In a moment his fevered imagination associated the tolling with the absence of his divinity from her pew, and in spite of passionately assuring himself that it could not be, and recalling how lovely and full of health she had been when he saw her through the gate, he was possessed by deep melancholy.
The days and hours until Sunday seemed an age to him–an age of foreboding and dread–but they at last passed by. In a fever of anxiety, he walked with the rest of the boys to church, and mounted the steps to the school gallery.
It was early; few of the worshippers had arrived, but in a little while there was a stir near the door. A group of figures shrouded in the black habiliments of woe were moving up the aisle–were entering her pew, from which alas, she was again absent!
Then he knew–knew that she would enter that sacred place nevermore!
Thanks to Josephine Paolucci for Post-processing this text!