Every object in the Poe Museum tells a story. Each artifact or piece of ephemera helps us interpret the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s life and influence. The July Object of the Month is no exception. The Cornwell Daguerreotype is a distinctly arresting image of Poe taken at a low point in the author’s life, four days after a suicide attempt. His fiancée Sarah Helen Whitman, who owned the original, which she named the "Ultima Thule" Daguerreotype, pronounced it "wonderful" and told Poe's biographer John H. Ingram that it had been taken "after a wild distracted night . . . and all the stormy ...
The Poe Museum Blog
Poe and Independence Day
Like many businesses, the Poe Museum was closed on July 4th for Independence Day. As we observe the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we might not realize that Poe would have celebrated the holiday, too.
At the time of Poe’s birth in 1809, only thirty-three years had passed since America had declared its independence from England. Such Founding Fathers as the author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson and the nation's second president John Adams were still alive. In fact, Poe would enter Jefferson’s University of Virginia while its founder was ...
The Pirate
Many know Edgar Allan Poe, the esteemed poet and writer of horror and mystery fiction. Many are unaware; however, that Poe had an older brother, Henry, “The Pirate”. Nicknamed for his sailing expeditions, William Henry Leonard Poe (who went by Henry) was a sailor and a poet. Born January 30, 1807 in Boston, his parents were actors, David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe (Poe Forward’s Poe Blog). [Let it be noted that it is thought he was born between January 12 and February 22 based on Eliza and David Poe’s brief vacation from the stage during this time (Timoney).] After Henry’s birth, Eliza and ...
Important Sculpture Unveiled at Poe Museum
Last Thursday, the Poe Museum unveiled its most recent major acquisition, the plaster model for Virginia's first life-sized statue of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Rudy's sculpture now on display at the Virginia Capitol.
Retired physician Dr. George Edward Barksdale commissioned this statue for the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond in 1956 because the Commonwealth of Virginia did not have any life-sized statues honoring the author. From this plaster model, a bronze cast was made at a cost of $9,500. After Dr. Barksdale donated the statue to the Commonwealth of Virginia, it was sent to a ...