After more than a decade, the Poe Museum reopened its Raven Room last Halloween night in a new gallery space. The exhibit features the Raven illustrations of James Carling, who attempted to illustrate the entire poem line-by-line. Since the Poe Museum first acquired the original artwork in the 1930s, the drawings were on continuous display in a specially devoted gallery known as the Raven Room.
At first, the Raven Room was located in the Museum's Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building (pictured above), but it was later moved to a blood-red room on the second floor of the Tea House (now ...
The Poe Museum Blog
Poe’s Actress Mother-Part One
"For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends."
This line was written on a watercolor painting of Boston, painted by Eliza Poe in 1808, which was gifted to Edgar on her deathbed (Poe Boston). Although Edgar was not able to know his mother extensively, and despite his mother dying when he was just the age of two, he gathered information from relatives and friends who knew Eliza, and felt she was very much a part of him. To Edgar, his mother was an esteemed actress, who he was proud of and stated ...
Poe’s Final Mystery Remains Unsolved
Edgar Allan Poe is so famous he shows up almost everywhere. Whether it’s a Beatles album cover, an episode of South Park, or on the side of Raven Beer bottle; his face is so familiar, many people likely think they know him. Especially around this time of year, students across the country are learning about Poe’s life and work. So how is it that we still know so little about someone this famous? Maybe it began with his death.
This October 7 marked the 165th anniversary of the death of Edgar Allan Poe. After all these years scholars are still debating what caused his untimely demise at the age ...
Poe as a Popularizer of Nineteenth-Century Sceince
Poe as a Popularizer of Nineteenth-Century Science
Several important modern-day science historians have conceded that their present understanding of how Industrial Age technologies affected society is limited, and some have started to focus their research on this period. Bernard Lightman argues “Scholars have barely scratched the surface in their attempts to understand the popularization of Victorian [nineteenth century] science” (206). He writes, “As scientists became professionalized [during the nineteenth century] and professional scientists began to pursue specialized research highly, the ...