The Poe Museum Blog

The following story includes an offensive depiction of a character named Jupiter. Poe's characterization of the formerly enslaved man reflects racist minstrel stereotypes.  The Gold-Bug What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.All in the Wrong. Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenôt family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, ...

Epimanes Chacun a ses vertus. Crebillon's Xerxes Antiochus Epiphanes is very generally looked upon as the Gog of the prophet Ezekiel. This honour is however more properly attributable to Cambyses, son of Cyrus. And, indeed the character of the Syrian king does by no means stand in need of any extraneous embellishment. His accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy one years before the coming of Christ — his attempt to plunder the temple of Diana at Ephesus — his implacable hostility to the Jews — his pollution of the Holy of Holies — and ...

The Duke De L’Omelette And stepped at once into a cooler clime. Keats fell by a criticism. Who was it died of ‘The Andromache?’ Ignoble souls! De L’Omelette perished of an ortolan. L’histoire en est brieve. Assist me Apicius! A golden cage bore the luxurious little wanderer, enamoured, melting, indolent, to the Chaussee D’Antin, from its home in far Peru. From its queenly possessor La Bellissima, to the Duc de L’Omelette, six peers of the empire conveyed the happy bird. It was ‘All for Love.’ That night the Duke was to sup alone. In the privacy of his bureau he ...

Raising the Wind; or, Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences Hey, diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle. Since the world began there have been two Jeremys. The one wrote a Jeremiad about usury, and was called Jeremy Bentham. He has been much admired by Mr. John Neal, and was a great man in a small way. The other gave name to the most important of the Exact Sciences, and was a great man in a great way — I may say, indeed, in the very greatest of ways. Diddling — or the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddle — is sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, the ...