July 20–December 5, 2009 Poe: Man, Myth, or Monster Who Was Edgar Allan Poe? He was America’s first internationally influential Orphaned at a Young Age, author, he invented a new literary genre, and he overturned the traditional Gothic tale by creating Talented Writer Struggles to Find Fortune, Fame the modern psychological horror story. Poe was a Virginia gentleman, an amateur scientist, a journalist, and America’s first great literary critic A Social Outcast and greatest poet. He was also a famously gifted ON 26 DECEMBER 1811, A DISASTROUS FIRE performer who recited his works to large audiences Born in Boston on 19 January 1809, destroyed the Richmond Theatre and claimed the lives of more up and down the East Coast. Poe was the son of actors Elizabeth (“Eliza”) than seventy of the city’s most prominent citizens, including the Arnold Poe and David Poe. At that time the governor. News of the fire shocked Americans and Europeans acting profession was considered immoral. For alike. Richmond plunged into a period of public mourning Who Is Edgar Allan Poe? part of Poe’s childhood, acting was banned in his and banned acting for eight years. Other cities postponed An instantly recognizable American author and hometown of Richmond, where as a child he bore dancing assemblies and cancelled balls. The tragedy led to historical figure, his name calls to mind spine- the stigma of having been the son of “players.” the publication of sermons and tracts condemning theatrical chilling stories and melancholy poetry. He John M. Carter noted that despite Poe’s being the performances, but in some other cities theater managers evokes the image of the tragic romantic poet, ward of a prominent Richmonder, one of Poe’s adopted new building regulations. misunderstood and rejected by society. We are classmates “held himself too high to associate so familiar with his life and work that we already with the son of an actress and a pauper, and let know him. Or do we? the high-strung [Poe] understand it.” Making her American stage debut in Boston in 1796, Elizabeth Arnold performed more than two hundred roles in theaters from Boston to Charleston. Norfolk, Richmond, and Alexandria were regular stops for companies. Abandoned by her husband, David Poe, she was left with three young children. When Eliza Poe died in Richmond on 8 December 1811, at age 24, she was buried beside the east wall of the cemetery U at St. John’s Church because her profession prevented her from being buried near the respectable citizens. Theatre on Fire. AWFUL CALAMITY! 1812. Boston? Broadside. Library of Virginia. The BURNING of the THEATRE in RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, on the Night of the 26th December 1811, By which awful Clergymen and civic leaders reacted to the Calamity upwards of SEVENTY FIVE of its most valuable BURNING OF THE RICHMOND THEATRE FIRE AND Citizens suddenly lost their lives, and many others, were THE LOSS OF LIFE BY CONDEMNING THEATRICAL much injured. 25 February 1812. B. Tanner, Philadelphia, PERFORMANCES, BALLS, AND OTHER ENTERTAINMENTS. publisher. Hand-colored aquatint. Prints and Photographs Collection, Library of Virginia. A collaborative exhibition presented by the Library of Virginia and the Poe Museum 2 With my Still Carrying Flame for Edgar theatrical ON AGAIN, OFF AGAIN ROMANCE HEATS UP ONCE MorE “And this maiden she lived with no description of the encounter survives in one of her let- background, other thought . Than to love and ters: “I remember seeing Edgar & his lovely wife, be loved by me.” —AnnabeL Lee very soon after they I gave wildly popular Poe became engaged to Elmira Royster Shelton were married. I shall before he left Richmond to attend the University never forget my feelings of Virginia, but her disapproving father broke off at the time—They were dramatic readings of their relationship by intercepting Poe’s letters. indescribable, almost The incident that Poe scholars believe inspired agonizing—However in my poems and stories. this poem occurred ten years later, when Poe and an instant, I remembered his new wife, Virginia Clemm Poe, encountered I was a married woman, and In Poe’s day, poetry was written to be recited Shelton and her husband at a party. Shelton’s banished them from me.” Virginia Clemm Poe as well as read. Authors like Poe and Charles Dickens drew large audiences for readings of their work. Poe could earn one hundred dollars “I am a Virginian.” in one night for reading his poetry. In the last Poe identified himself with the state in which to Poe, Allan showed him little affection, and years of his life, he performed in the major eastern he had been reared, educated, and begun his tensions between the two increased as Poe grew cities. Eighteen hundred people attended one of career in journalism. When the actress Eliza Poe older. In the Allan household, Poe learned the his readings in Massachusetts, and newspapers died in Richmond in 1811, she left three young characteristics of a southern gentleman—proper frequently praised his dramatic recitations. One children. William Henry Leopold Poe grew up etiquette, chivalry towards women, and a sense of witness, Susan Archer Talley, later wrote that at with his grandparents in Baltimore. Rosalie Poe class distinction. Poe grew up accustomed to the one of his performances the servants fled the room grew up in the Richmond family of William fine furnishings with which the Allans decorated in terror. MacKenzie and his wife. John Allan and his wife their homes. As an adult, he lived in poverty in Frances Keeling Valentine Allan took Edgar, a succession of sparsely furnished rented rooms Not everyone enjoyed Poe’s writings or dramatic age two, into their household and gave him the and houses, but the characters in his fictional performances. Ralph Waldo Emerson dismissed name Allan when he was baptized. A successful works, such as “The Raven” and “The Fall of him as the “jingle man” whose works lacked any merchant, Allan ensured that Poe received a good the House of Usher,” live in the kind of opulent moral lessons. Poe, on the other hand, believed education but never adopted him. According manors Poe knew in his childhood. that a poem or story succeeded only if it was able to create an emotional impact on its reader. POE USED REALIstIC DETAIls to CHANGE FANTAsy INto SCIENCE FICTION. During his lifetime, Poe’s best-selling work was The Conchologist’s First Book, a textbook on shells. His last book, which he considered his most important work, is Eureka, a long philosophical essay in which he tries to explain the mysteries of the universe. Here he proposes an early version of the “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe—eighty years before the scientific community embraced it. The Conchologist’s First Book. 1848. Bound volume. Library of Virginia. Hans Pfaall--A Tale. Southern Literary Messenger. June 1835. Poe’s other scientific interests included astronomy, biology, and modern technology. He was fascinated The Conchologist’s First Book reveals something of Poe published his early science fiction story “Hans by the recent invention of photography and by Poe’s scientific interests and also demonstrates that Phaal, A Tale” while he was editor of the Southern the possibility of the creation of the electric light Poe had to take on an uncreative piece of hackwork Literary Messenger in Richmond. He incorporated bulb, which was invented almost forty years after as he struggled to make a living as the first American scientific details to make the account of a trip to the his death. Poe proposed replacing the expensive writer to support himself solely through his writing. moon sound plausible. In fact, he claimed that some typeset printing of his day with a form of anastatic printing similar to the modern photocopier. He The work might not have fulfilled Poe’s need for readers thought this was a true story. Poe’s science hoped this technology would allow books to be creative expression, but the fifty dollars it brought him fiction inspired the French writer and “Father of published inexpensively so that a wider audience were very much needed to supplement the income he Science Fiction” Jules Verne, who also wrote stories of could afford them. received from magazine work. space travel and futuristic technology. 3 THE FIRst AMERICAN AUthoR Southern Critic Attacks Self- LITERARY Aggrandizing Northern Writers, to LIVE BY HIS WRITINGS Accusing Them of “Puffery” [Image: Masthead of SLM] QUACKS! Many American authors of Poe’s day were able As proud as Poe was to call himself a Virginian, he the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow a “legion to devote themselves to writing because they had felt slighted by the northern literary establishment, of literary quackery” and criticized Longfellow access to family fortunes or because they had which tended to look down on southern writers. for his lack of originality. Poe’s antagonism comfortable positions at universities. Left entirely As a literary critic, Poe attacked the northern toward northern writers made him unwelcome in out of John Allan’s will (which made provisions for establishment and exposed its practice of “puffery” literary circles and hindered his own career. Thirty illegitimate children Allan had never seen), Poe in which authors hired their friends to write years after Poe’s death, another southern writer, become the first American writer to make a living positive reviews of their work in order to boost William Hand Browne, wrote, “Some of the old from his writing. advance book sales. vindictiveness against Poe still crops up occasionally Virginia Clemm Poe in the Northern papers—partly because they hate After publishing three volumes of poetry, Poe Boston and New York were the center of the the South and everything Southern, and partly turned to magazines as a ready market for his American publishing industry and home to many because some of the old ‘mutual-admiration’ set work.