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 ...
science fiction
Poe’s First Published Story about a Shipwreck Foreshadows Eureka: A Prose Poem (Part I of II)
By Murray Ellison
Poe’s first important tale, “MS. Found in a Bottle,” (1833) won the Baltimore Visiter’s first prize for fiction. Poe scholar, Thomas Mabbott calls it a “masterpiece,” contending that “winning the contest set the author on the way to lasting fame” (Tales and Sketches 131). The Visiter wrote that “Poe’s tales are eminently distinguished by a wild, vigorous and poetical imagination, a rich style and a various and curious learning” (Thomas and Jackson 137). “MS.” reveals Poe’s interest in a broad range of science-related topics, including secret writing, conundrums, ...
Folio Society Releases New Edition of Poe’s Only Novel
The Poe Museum recently received a small slip-cased volume in the mail. While most of the books that cross my desk contain Poe’s tales of terror (“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and the like), this case holds an edition of the only novel Poe ever finished, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket Comprising the Details of a Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on Board the American Brig Grampus, on Her Way to the South Seas, in the Month of June, 1827. With an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivers; Their Shipwreck and Subsequent Horrible Suffering from Famine; Their ...
Edgar Allan Poe Hoax Now on Display at Poe Museum
The Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia recently acquired a rare 1846 British pamphlet Mesmerism in Articulo Mortis, in which Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional story of mesmerizing the dead, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,”(1845) is reprinted as a true account for a London audience. The Poe Museum’s new acquisition is a gift from Poe collector and Poe Museum trustee Susan Jaffe Tane. This important piece has appeared in exhibits at the Poe Museum in 1997 and the Grolier Club in New York in 2014. The book retains its original paper cover and is in fine condition. It is now on display ...
