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The Haunting of Edgar Allan Poe
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BIOGRAPHY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_PoeBIOGRAPHY: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edgar-allan-poeBIOGRAPHY (with numerous links): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edgar-Allan-PoeTHE POE MUSEUM (Richmond, VA): https://poemuseum.org/THE POE SOCIETY OF BALTIMORE: https://www.eapoe.org/index.htmTHE POE HOUSE (Philadelphia, PA): https://www.nps.gov/places/poe-house.htmPOE’S DEATH (Smithsonian Magazine): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/still-mysterious-death-edgar-allan-poe-180952936/POE AND THE DETECTIVE STORY: https://lithub.com/we-have-edgar-allen-poe-to-thank-for-the-detective-story/POE AND THE DETECTIVE STORY: https://crimereads.com/when-poe-invented-the-detective-story-he-changed-the-literary-world-forever/POE AND SCIENCE FICTION: https://www.nps.gov/articles/poe-sciencefiction.htmPOE BIO WITH EMPHASIS ON SCI-FI: https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/poe_edgar_allanPOE AND AMERICAN GOTHIC LITERATURE: https://www.grin.com/document/288323POE'S POEMS with annotations and links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poems_by_Edgar_Allan_Poe POE'S MAJOR STORIES (links to 45): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Short_stories_by_Edgar_Allan_PoePOE’S ONLY NOVEL: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/story-edgar-allan-poes-novel/9672/TEN BEST SHORT STORIES: https://bookriot.com/best-edgar-allan-poe-stories/TEN BEST SHORT STORIES: https://interestingliterature.com/2015/10/the-best-edgar-allan-poe-stories/TEN BEST SHORT STORIES: https://www.popmatters.com/edgar-allan-poes-10-best-storiesTEN BEST POEMS: https://poemanalysis.com/best-poems/edgar-allan-poe/TEN BEST POEMS: https://interestingliterature.com/2019/07/the-best-edgar-allan-poe-poems-everyone-should-read/TEN BEST POEMS: https://learnodo-newtonic.com/edgar-allan-poe-famous-poemsPOE'S ESSAYS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays_by_Edgar_Allan_Poe
VIDEO
FULL BIOGRAPHY (from Biography Channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5two65m1QE4-MINUTE BIO (from Biography Channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-387NMCR6w5-MINUTE TED/ED OVERVIEW “Why You Should Read Edgar Allan Poe”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lgg-pVjOokBIOGRAPHY AND OVERVIEW (Biographics): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m9p2Z5DqWYTHE RAVEN (Christopher Lee): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BefliMlEzZ8THE TELL-TALE HEART (25-minute film): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMBihsb14-4POE AND VIRGINIA CLEMM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoYWn8nRCEA
"Raven" Web Resources
COMPLETE OVERVIEW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTARY (Poe Society of Baltimore): https://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/ravent.htm
READING BY CHRISTOPHER LEE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BefliMlEzZ8&t=95s
READING BY JAMES EARL JONES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqPQXqQXzI&t=65s
READING BY VINCENT PRICE (poor video quality; excellent interpretation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7zR3IDEHrM&t=23s
And then there was the marriage...
Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (née Clemm; August 15, 1822 – January 30, 1847) and her husband Edgar were first cousins and publicly married when Virginia was 13 and Poe was 27. Biographers continue to disagree as to the exact nature of the couple's relationship. Though their marriage was loving, some biographers suggest they viewed one another more like a brother and sister. In January 1842, she contracted tuberculosis, growing worse for five years until she died of the disease at the age of 24 in the family's cottage, at that time outside New York City. Along with other family members, Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe lived together off and on for several years before their marriage. The couple often moved to accommodate Poe's employment, living intermittently in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. A few years after their wedding, Poe was involved in a substantial scandal involving Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet. Rumors about amorous improprieties on her husband's part affected Virginia so much that on her deathbed she claimed that Ellet had murdered her. After her death, her body was eventually placed under the same memorial marker as her husband's in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, Maryland. Only one image of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has been authenticated: a watercolor portrait painted several hours after her death. The disease and eventual death of his wife had a substantial effect on Edgar Allan Poe, who became despondent and turned to alcohol to cope. Her struggles with illness and death are believed to have affected his poetry and prose, where dying young women appear as a frequent motif, as in "Annabel Lee," "The Raven," and "Ligeia."
On the one hand....
Virginia and Poe were by all accounts a happy and devoted couple. Poe's one-time employer George Rex Graham wrote of their relationship: "His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty." Poe once wrote to a friend, "I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife." She, in turn, by many contemporary accounts, nearly idolized her husband. She often sat close to him while he wrote, kept his pens in order, and folded and addressed his manuscripts. She showed her love for Poe in an acrostic poem she composed when she was 23, dated February 14, 1846:
Ever with thee I wish to roam — Dearest my life is thine. Give me a cottage for my home And a rich old cypress vine, Removed from the world with its sin and care And the tattling of many tongues. Love alone shall guide us when we are there — Love shall heal my weakened lungs; And Oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend, Never wishing that others may see! Perfect ease we'll enjoy, without thinking to lend Ourselves to the world and its glee — Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.
But then there's this...
The "tattling of many tongues" in Virginia's Valentine poem was a reference to actual incidents. In 1845, Poe had begun a possible flirtation with Frances Sargent Osgood, a married 34-year-old poet. Virginia was aware of the friendship and might even have encouraged it. She often invited Osgood to visit them at home, believing that the older woman had a "restraining" effect on Poe, who had made a promise to "give up the use of stimulants" and was never drunk in Osgood's presence. At the same time, another poet, Elizabeth F. Ellet, became enamored of Poe and jealous of Osgood. Though, in a letter to Sarah Helen Whitman, Poe called her love for him "loathsome" and wrote that he "could do nothing but repel [it] with scorn", he printed many of her poems to him in the Broadway Journal while he was its editor. Ellet was known for being meddlesome and vindictive, and, while visiting the Poe household in late January 1846, she saw one of Osgood's personal letters to Poe. According to Ellet, Virginia pointed out "fearful paragraphs" in Osgood's letter. Ellet contacted Osgood and suggested she should beware of her indiscretions and asked Poe to return her letters, motivated either by jealousy or by a desire to cause scandal. Osgood then sent Margaret Fuller and Anne Lynch Botta to ask Poe on her behalf to return the letters. Angered by their interference, Poe called them "Busy-bodies" and said that Ellet had better "look after her own letters," suggesting indiscretion on her part. He then gathered up these letters from Ellet and left them at her house. Though these letters had already been returned to her, Ellet asked her brother "to demand of me the letters." Her brother, Colonel William Lummis, did not believe that Poe had already returned them and threatened to kill him. In order to defend himself, Poe requested a pistol from Thomas Dunn English. English, Poe's friend and a minor writer who was also a trained doctor and lawyer, likewise did not believe that Poe had already returned the letters and even questioned their existence. The easiest way out of the predicament, he said, "was a retraction of unfounded charges." Angered at being called a liar, Poe pushed English into a fistfight. Poe later claimed he was triumphant in the fight, though English claimed otherwise, and Poe's face was badly cut by one of English's rings. In Poe's version, he said, "I gave [English] a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death." Either way, the fight further sparked gossip over the Osgood affair. Meanwhile, Osgood's husband stepped in and threatened to sue Ellet unless she formally apologized for her insinuations. She retracted her statements in a letter to Osgood saying, "The letter shown me by Mrs Poe must have been a forgery" created by Poe himself. She put all the blame on Poe, suggesting the incident was because Poe was "intemperate and subject to acts of lunacy." Ellet spread the rumor of Poe's insanity, which was taken up by other enemies of Poe and reported in newspapers. The St. Louis Reveille reported: "A rumor is in circulation in New York, to the effect that Mr. Edgar A. Poe, the poet and author, has been deranged, and his friends are about to place him under the charge of Dr. Brigham of the Insane Retreat at Utica." The scandal eventually died down only when Osgood reunited with her husband. Virginia, however, had been very affected by the whole affair. She had received anonymous letters about her husband's alleged indiscretions as early as July 1845. It is presumed that Ellet was involved with the actual writing of these letters, but they so disturbed Virginia that she allegedly declared on her deathbed that "Mrs. E. had been [her] murderer."
(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Eliza_Clemm_Poe and a variety of sources, including:
Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0-8071-2321-8. Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0-684-19370-1. Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Chicago: The John C. Winston Company, 1926. Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8018-5730-9 Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0-06-092331-8. Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001. ISBN 978-0-8160-4161-9.