In the Norton Critical Edition, G. R. Thompson has fully introduced, commented on, and edited each text. The section “Backgrounds and Contexts” includes fifty-seven carefully selected documents that illuminate the productive yet brief career of Poe, including reviews, prefaces, and correspondence by Poe, as well as thematic pieces dealing with Transcendentalism and alternative romanticism, the sciences of the mind, literature of the senses, and the South and slavery. Fourteen selected critical essays address Poe's poetry, fiction, politics, and psychology. Contributors include Floyd Stovall, Robert C. McLean, Richard Wilbur, James W. Gargano, Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Paul John Eakin, Grace Farrell, Liahna Klenman Babener, Barton Levi St. Armand, Joseph N. Riddel, J. Gerald Kennedy, John Carlos Rowe, Terence Whalen, and John T. Irwin. A Selected Bibliography is also included.