Last year, we shared part one of Eliza Poe's life. Follow the rest of her journey as David, Edgar, and Edgar's siblings are introduced.
Following Eliza's marriage, she and her husband, Charles, arrived in Alexandria, Virginia, and were set to perform at Liberty Hall for six weeks in August 1802 (Smith 59-60). When Eliza began rehearsals there, the hall was the newest theatre in Virginia, having been only three years old. According to Smith, a tragic accident had befallen during the summer of its opening, as the company lost Thomas Wade West, the manager of the company. His wife, Margaret, ...
The Poe Museum Blog
New Exhibit Explores Mental Illness in Poe’s Life and Work
True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
~ Edgar Allan Poe, ”The Tell-Tale Heart,” 1843
“I am constitutionally sensitive — nervous in a very unusual degree.”
~ Edgar Allan Poe, Letter to George W. Eveleth, January 4, 1848
In stories like "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe explores the mind's descent into insanity with such vivid realism that they have lost none of their power after over 170 years. Generations of readers have confused the author Edgar Allan Poe with the mentally ill narrators of his famous stories "The ...
Fragments of Poe’s Bride’s Wedding Dress Revealed
Every once in a while, a discovery sheds new light on history bringing past events more clearly into view. While historians have preserved descriptions of Edgar Allan Poe's wedding to his thirteen year old cousin Virginia, no artifacts of the event seem to have survived--until now. Tucked away in private collections for nearly 180 years, two fragments of Virginia Poe's wedding dress have come to light and will be on display at the Poe Museum in Richmond this summer.
Long a source of public fascination, Poe's "child-bride" Virginia Poe has been the subject of at least two novels, and she has ...
Poe Scholar Decodes Poe’s Gold-Bug
Poe was much more than the Master of the Macabre. He was also the Master of Mystery, the inventor of detective fiction, and an avid cryptographer who introduced puzzles and codes into his poems and short stories. His short story “The Gold-Bug” features an encrypted treasure map and a search for clues and codes that set the standard for such popular films as National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code. This spring the Poe Museum planted a new Gold-Bug Garden modeled after this setting of this important story. In honor of the opening of the new Gold-Bug Garden at the Poe Museum in Richmond, on ...