The population of New York City was 515,547 at the beginning of 1849. When a cholera epidemic broke out that spring, about 100,000 people fled the city. Of those who remained, 5,071 succumbed to the disease. The July 8 issue of The Christian Intelligencer reported that 358 New Yorkers died of cholera in the week of June 30 through July 7. Also on July 7, Edgar Allan Poe wrote his mother-in-law, “I have been so ill — have had the cholera, or spasms quiet as bad, and can now hardly hold the pen…The very instant you get this, come to me. The joy of seeing you will almost compensate for our ...
The Poe Museum Blog
Conducting a Comprehensive Study of Poe’s, Eureka: A Prose Poem
First, I am going to propose what a researcher might have to do to conduct a comprehensive study of Poe’s 1848 book, Eureka: A Prose Poem. Then, I am going to explain why I decided not to fall into the trap of attempting to evaluate Poe's final work. As I noted in my previous Poe and Science Blogs, in 2012 and 2013 , I attempted to design a Prospectus on Eureka for my M.A. Thesis in English Literature at the Virginia Commonwealth University. To that end, I worked with Chris Semtner at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond and several professors at VCU putting ...
Salvador Dali Meets the Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe
May 11 marks the 112th birthday of one of the twentieth century’s most important artists, Salvador Dalí. What does the great Spanish Surrealist painter Dalí have to do with Edgar Allan Poe? More than you might think.
Dalí mentions Poe at the beginning and the end of his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. In the first anecdote, Dalí describes the cultural climate in Paris in the 1930s and how everyone was reading Poe and Marie Bonaparte’s new psychoanalytical take of Poe’s work. Bonaparte’s search for hidden Freudian meanings in Poe’s work appealed to Dalí and the Surrealists, ...
The Critic Who Burned “Fairy-Land”
Editor Nathaniel Parker Willis once burned a manuscript of Poe's "Fairy-Land." That seems like pretty harsh treatment from a literary editor; and we wonder why such atmospheric lines as "Dim vales-and shadowy floods- / And cloudy-looking woods" might receive such severe critical feedback? The answer lies in comparing the poem we commonly know with its alternative publishing in Poe's anthology of poems in 1831.
It was no secret that Poe was always at work altering lines and switching words-"Fairy-Land" was no exception.
Our readers may be familiar with the classic verse, which reads,
Dim ...