On my "Memoir Of The Author"...

When Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849 I took it upon myself to pen a memoir which, upon its publication, was the cause of much controversy. Many friends of the deceased poet emerged to accuse me of painting a less than accurate portrait of my subject. In a sense this is true; though my memoir was by no means flattering, I omitted much that would surely have condemned the man to the annals of depravity. Had malice been working through my pen I would have brought to light dark aspects of the mans character that his literary genius simply could not excuse; his most prosaic sonnet would be prohibited in any decent household. I made no effort to conceal the fact that Poe was a man of low moral character; that he was an irredeemable drunkard is widely known. I detailed many scandalous events in his tumultuous life, but kept from public knowledge many others. This was done primarily for the sake of Poe's dear aunt Maria Clemm, the mother of his young wife. Were she to read of the unspeakable acts performed by her son in law to which I am unfortunately aware it would have broken her heart. My compassion was tested when Mrs. Clemm and several of Poe's friends viciously attacked me, saying that my biography was a spleenful, libelous effort to destroy my most bitter enemy's reputation posthumously. I very nearly prepared for publication every sorditude that I had previously concealed; had my friend Mr. Leland not intervened I would have shocked the world with Poe's atrocities, and poor Mrs. Clemm would not have gone to her grave with some hope that she might see her sweet 'Eddie' in Paradise.
My own reputation has been irreparably diminished by this affair. If I am remembered at all I am misunderstood to be a vengeful character assassin who exploited my position as Poe's literary executor to ruin his reputation because I was jealous of his literary ability. I am either forgotten or forsaken, and all as a result of my association with the degenerate Edgar Allan Poe. I was not his friend, nor he mine, but my appreciation for his genius endeared him to me somehow. I first knew him as a professional associate in 1841, and he was a casual acquaintance for a while thereafter; but before long he made it clear that he was my bitter enemy. His bilious attacks on myself and on my work, made worse by the horrifying behavior to which I was witness, make it impossible for me to reconcile the fact that he is known and loved while I, a pious patriot who worked tirelessly for the betterment of American letters, am reviled for my spite and envy. It is for this reason that I now determine to expose the villain Poe for the loathsome wretch that he was. Though my documentation for much of what I plan to relate has long been destroyed, be assured that every word of my forthcoming expose of Poe shall be free from falsehood. My benevolent nature makes this work distasteful to me; I only endure it for the sake of my own good name, and so that the truth will finally be known about that scoundrel Edgar Poe.