Williams, Walter Jon, "No Spot of Ground" In this alternate universe, Edgar Allan Poe managed to wind up as a Confederate Brigadier General in the American Civil War. He has still written fantasy and poetry, albeit a bit different. The war becomes the Hell to him that our Poe knew from chemical dependency.
Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, November 1989 vol. 13 no. 11 (pp. 136-191)
What Might Have Been, vol. 2: Alternate Heroes (edited by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg) Bantam 28279-4, January 1990
(pp. 293-354)
http://www.nesfa.org/Recursion/recursive_W.htm
A good story, worth reading.
So would something like this work?