This article is an excerpt from Murray Ellison’s VCU MA Thesis on Poe and Nineteenth-Century Science, ©2015
Near the end of his journalistic career, Poe was likely running out of actual science reports to write about that would excite the public’s interest in science as spectacularly as his fictional stories did. Perhaps, by that time, his imagination far exceeded science’s ability to create new inventions. His 1843 “Balloon Hoax” story demonstrated that sensational quasi-scientific newspaper reports could command the public’s attention in ways that even he could have never imagined. By ...
Poe's Works
Poe’s Cryptographic Imagination – Part II
Modern Computer Solves Poe’s Last Inscrutable Puzzle
Murray Ellison | April 13, 2018
Excerpts from Murray’s VCU Master of Arts Thesis on Poe and Science © 2015.
Poe published several columns on cryptography entitled “A Few Words on Secret Writing.” He explains that advanced puzzles, where the only secret to the code is “locked in the creator’s mind can be very difficult or nearly impossible to solve.” Poe mentions that the acclaimed sixteenth-century English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon “very properly defined three essentials in secret correspondence.” Bacon’s first essential is ...
Poe’s Cryptographic Imagination – Part I
Poe's Cryptographic Imagination - Part I
Murray Ellison | February 1, 2018
Excerpts from Murray’s VCU Master of Arts Thesis on Poe and Science © 2015.
Poe continued to demonstrate an interest in unlocking mysteries and secrets in several of the essays and newspaper columns he wrote on secret codes and cryptography. These popular weekly columns offered puzzles, in which readers were invited to propose solutions and suggest additional ones for use in subsequent editions. He then provided the solutions to the ciphers in subsequent issues. Once Poe introduced the topic, readers sent in hundreds ...
The Poe & Science Series
Was Poe Convinced that Phrenology is a Science?
Murray Ellison | Jan. 8, 2018
Excerpts from Murray’s VCU Master of Arts Thesis on Poe and Science © 2015
Poe continued his interest in spectacular news stories that blurred the lines between fact and fiction in an 1836 review on this topic: “A Review of Phrenology and the Moral Influences of Phrenology.” During the nineteenth century, there had been many debates among scientists whether Phrenology was a legitimate science or a pseudo-science. Advocates of this belief often used emotional appeals and anecdotal testimonials in order to “prove” ...