The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe 1. Timeline and exhibition intro information About this ...

58 Pages·2009·0.24 MB·English

by  Daniel Zmud

From Out that Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe

1. Timeline and exhibition intro information
About this Exhibition
Illustrations

2. Poe’s life and Works
• Poe’s Early Years
• The Working Writer
• Poe and Science
• Poe in Love

3. Poe’s Genres
• Poe the Poet
• Poe and Detective Fiction
• Poe the Critic
• The Raven
• Dore’s Raven

4. Death and Legacy
• Death and Infamy
• Poe in France
• Perspectives on Poe
• Popular Poe

5. The Haunted Mind (wall items only)

6. Portraits (wall and vitrine items only)

7. unaffiliated items
From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe

A Bicentennial Exhibition at the Small Special Collections Library at the University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas
at Austin

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
—“The Raven”

Poet, literary critic, visionary, inventor of the detective story, master of the macabre: this
was Edgar Allan Poe. One of the most important and widely read American authors of
the nineteenth century, Poe still fascinates schoolchildren and scholars alike. His poem
“The Raven” is among the most memorable in the language, and his highly original
tales continue to amaze and terrify.

Darkness, anxiety, and obsession are the stuff of Poe’s works—and of his life. This
exhibition sheds light on Poe’s education, his career as a journalist, his tumultuous
relationships with women, and his tragic early death. Orphaned at an early age, Poe
briefly attended the University of Virginia and West Point Academy, publishing his
first work in 1827. For the rest of his life, Poe made his living as a writer and editor but
was constantly in debt and plagued by personal tragedy and literary scandal. Having
endured his young wife’s death, Poe himself died under mysterious circumstances at
the age of forty.

On his 200th birthday, Poe lives on. His literary reputation survived the premature
burial given him by his literary executor, Rufus Griswold; the admiration of French
writers kept him before the public eye. Later, he became widely appreciated in his own
country and around the world. Poe’s insights into the shadowy places of the human
mind have inspired some of the finest illustrators, including Edouard Manet and Arthur
Rackham, whose work is featured here.
Text Panel: The Poe Collections

Most of the items in the exhibition from the Harry Ransom Center collections once
belonged to William H. Koester (1888-1964). Koester, a resident of Baltimore, began
collecting first editions and manuscripts of Poe in the 1930s. He acquired the collection
of the earlier Poe scholar and collector J. H. Whitty. In addition to the manuscripts of
“The Domain of Arnheim,” “The Spectacles,” and portions of Poe’s most famous
poems, the Koester collection includes many letters written by and to Poe, books
belonging to Poe (including the author’s heavily annotated copies of the Tales and Poems
and Eureka), and a large group of sheet music for songs based on Poe’s works. The
Koester Collection was acquired by the Center in 1966.
John Henry Ingram (1842-1916), biographer, editor, and champion of kEdgar Allan Poe,
corresponded with Poe’s friends and family and assembled a significant collection of
letters, manuscripts, photographs, and printed materials. The University of Virginia
acquired the collection in 1922. Other Poe materials are part of the Clifton Waller Barrett
Library of American Literature at Virginia.
The Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection on the Ransom Center web site combines
images of Poe manuscripts and letters at the Ransom Center with a selection of related
archival materials, copies of book annotated by the author, sheet music based on poems
by Poe, and related materials from the University of Texas collections.

197

“The Buried Treasury of Edgar Allan Poe” in The Baltimore Sun, January 18, 1953
Digital reproduction
Koester Poe Collection

118 [original item used for exhibition identity]

Bernhardt Wall (American, 1872-1956)
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, 1919
Etching, drypoint
Koester Poe Collection

Timeline: not included in this document. visible only in exhibition

Illustrations of Poe’s Works

The rich history of illustrating Poe’s works, particularly “The Raven” and the
short stories, could easily be the subject of a separate exhibition. Throughout this
exhibition are to be found original work by Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Gustave
Doré, and the largely unknown Irish-American artist James William Carling, whose
melodramatic illustrations for The Raven are his only significant work. At their best,
Carling’s forty-three drawings (usually displayed together in the Poe Museum in
Richmond) capture the darkness and terror of the poem.
Of particular interest is the set of original watercolors and pen and ink drawings
by Arthur Rackham, one of the most celebrated illustrators of the last century, who
contributed the artwork for an edition of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1935.
These illustrations, which may be seen throughout the exhibition, show Rackham’s
particular affinity for the element of the grotesque in Poe. The Rackham illustrations
form part of the Koester Poe Collection at the Ransom Center.

146, 147

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)
The dust jacket illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination
(London: G. Harrap, 1935)
Charcoal, ink, and gouache
Koester Poe Collection

The printed dust jacket of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination (London: G.
Harrap, 1935)
Koester Poe Collection

124, 125

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)
The cloth binding design for Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination (London:
G. Harrap, 1935)
Koester Poe Collection

Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)
The title page of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination (London: G. Harrap,
1935)
Pen and ink
Koester Poe Collection

123

Arthur Rackham (American, 1867-1939)
An illustration for the spine of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination
(London: G. Harrap, 1935)
Pen and ink
Koester Poe Collection

Text Panel: Poe’s Life and Career

Poe’s personal and professional lives were suffused with struggle. Orphaned at an early
age, Poe was taken in by Richmond merchant John Allan, who had little ability to
nurture his foster son’s talents. The two often found themselves at loggerheads. Poe’s
rebelliousness led to his departures from the University of Virginia, West Point
Academy, and the U.S. Army, despite his intelligence and love of learning.

Poe found his poetic voice at an early age with the publication of Tamerlane and Other
Poems (1827). Despite his considerable talents and capacity for hard work, Poe struggled
to find a steady source of income for his family as an editor or government appointee.
He earned a precarious living from his occasional writings, reviews, and tales, which
brought him a measure of literary recognition and brief periods of relative prosperity.
Poe’s tendency to avenge slights—real or imagined—in print and his sense of being an
outsider kept him from being fully accepted by the American literary establishment,
though he knew and corresponded with most of its important figures.
Poe’s relationships with women were likewise intense and often tumultuous. His
ethereal, child-like cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1836 and who died of
tuberculosis in 1847, was the great love of his life. Her mother (and Poe’s aunt), his
beloved “Muddy,” served as a substitute for the real mother he had lost in infancy. Poe
cut a dashing figure in the literary salons of the 1840s. Following Virginia’s death, he
formed several romantic attachments, all of which were ultimately undermined by his
drinking and emotional problems.

Poe’s Early Years

Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, the child of David and Eliza
Poe. The following year, David Poe abandoned his family. In 1811, Eliza Poe’s health
began to fail, possibly due to tuberculosis, and she died that December. Orphaned
before his third birthday, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond; his
brother and his sister went to live with other families. Although the Allans never
formally adopted him, they gave him the name Edgar Allan Poe.
John Allan emphasized education, funding boarding school for Poe during the
years the Allans lived in England (1815-1820); he sent Poe to the University of Virginia
upon the family’s return to Richmond. William Wertenbaker, the University’s Librarian,
later recalled a sober, quiet, and orderly young man whom he never witnessed “in the
slightest degree under the influence of intoxicating liquors.” Allan’s paltry financial
support—a circumstance that caused increasing friction between the two men—led Poe
deep into debt, until he could no longer remain at the University. Many years later,
Rufus Griswold’s vindictive and inaccurate obituary of Poe would state that Poe was
expelled for his dissolute ways.
Upon Poe’s return to Richmond, he and Allan continued to quarrel, until Poe left
the Allan home for good and moved to Boston. Finding it difficult to support himself as
a writer, he enlisted first in the Army and then entered the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point. Neither of these ventures succeeded, and Poe’s life-long pattern of financial
instability was firmly established.

26

A playbill for a performance of Mysteries of the Castle and He Wou’d Be a Soldier at the
Theater Royal, Covent Garden, England, 1795
Playbills and Programs Collection

Poe’s mother Eliza Arnold Poe was the daughter of English actors. Her mother
Elizabeth, “Mrs. Arnold,” is listed as here as one of the players in this London
performance. Eliza and her mother sailed to America in late 1795.

156, 78

Sir William Charles Ross
Eliza Poe, 19th century
Koester Poe Collection
Portrait of Eliza Poe on ivory, date unknown
The Richard Gimbel Collection
Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia

Poe’s mother Eliza Arnold Poe made her stage debut at the age of nine. In her
brief life, she played nearly three hundred roles and performed in theaters in Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond. She acted until a few days before his birth and
resumed work three weeks afterward. Theater reviewers praised her talents and often
noted her petite figure and large, dark eyes. Onstage, she sang, danced, and played
dramatic roles—such as Shakespeare’s Juliet and Ophelia. She died at the age of twenty-
four.
Ross based his portrait on the only known likeness of Eliza Poe, displayed here.
This miniature was left to Edgar after her death and likely was in his possession when
he died in 1849.

1, 27

The libretto for Michael Kelly’s Cinderella, or The little glass slipper: A grand allegorical
pantomimic spectacle. (Boston: Printed for John West, 1807)
Inscribed “D. Poe”
Koester Poe Collection

John Tobin’s The curfew: a play, in five acts (London: Printed for Richard Phillips, 1807)
Inscribed N. L. Usher, with contents note on the cover in Edgar Allan Poe’s hand, and a
change in the dramatis personae in David Poe’s hand
Koester Poe Collection

Poe’s father and mother both worked as touring actors. Eliza Poe’s talents often
outshone her husband’s when they performed together. Reviewing one of her
performances, a critic noted that “Mrs. Poe’s name is a brilliant gem in the theatric
crown” and claimed that no other actress “has received more than she of the public
applause.” David’s performances, however, earned a reputation for dullness: “a
footman,” one New York review explained, “is the extent of what he ought to attempt.”

25

H. Clarke’s Fabulæ Æsopi selectæ, or, Select fables of Æsop: with an English translation, more
literal than any yet extant, designed for the readier instruction of beginners in the Latin tongue
(Baltimore: Joseph Cushing, 1817)
Koester Poe Collection

The inscription in this copy reads “Edgar A. Poe’s copy,” in what appears to be the
writer’s juvenile signature. Poe later excelled in Latin as a student at the University of
Virginia. His short stay at the university is documented on the wall nearby.
165

An official copy of the proceedings of the trial of Cadet E. A. Poe of the United States
Military Academy, January 1, 1831
John Henry Ingram’s Poe Collection
Special Collections, U.Va. Library

Deliberately flaunting rules at West Point in order to get court-martialed, Poe was
charged with “gross neglect of duty” and “disobedience of orders.” He pled guilty to
the charges and was discharged from the Academy.

Wall:

75

Edgar Allan Poe’s entry in the University of Virginia matriculation book, 1825-1855,
University Archives, Special Collections, U.Va. Library
Digital Reproduction

This book documents Poe’s enrollment in February 1826, one year after the first
session of classes at Thomas Jefferson’s university commenced. Although no records
document any meeting between the two men, Jefferson made visits to the university to
supervise progress on buildings—such as the nearly complete Rotunda—until a month
before his death in July 1826.
Poe’s entry is at the very bottom of the page; he was one of 177 students that
year.

76

A list of library fines, including Edgar Allan Poe’s overdue fine, August 11, 1826
University Archives, Special Collections, U.Va. Library

As a student, Poe borrowed library books on ancient and American history and two
volumes of Voltaire. This list indicates that Poe’s failure to return Charles Rollin’s
Ancient History on time resulted in a sixty-cent fine.

79

A letter from Edgar Allan Poe to John Allan, January 3, 1831
Valentine Richmond History Center, Richmond, Va.
Digital Reproduction

Writing from West Point, Poe outlines the costs of attending the University of Virginia,
demonstrating how it would have been impossible to avoid getting into debt. Railing
against Allan’s parsimony, Poe blames Allan for all of the “difficulties in which I was
involved in Charlottesville.” He also writes of having “no one on Earth who cared for
me, or loved me.” After several years of increasingly bitter difficulties, the rift between
the two men became irreparable.

100

A page from Alexandre Dumas’s autograph manuscript account of Poe’s visit to Paris,
date unknown
The Richard Gimbel Collection
Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia

Scholars have been baffled by the lack of any documentary evidence for Poe’s
whereabouts in 1832. One theory is that Poe traveled to Paris. Dumas compellingly
relates an account of Poe as his house guest in Paris in 1832. The French author’s
description of Poe bears an uncanny similarity to Poe’s fictional detective Auguste
Dupin:

Poe had one curious idiosyncrasy; he liked the night better than the day. Indeed
his love of the darkness amounted to a passion….As soon as day began to break,
he hermetically sealed up the windows of his room and lit a couple of candles. In
the midst of this pale illumination he worked…But as soon as the clock told him
that the real darkness had come, he would come in for me, take me out with him
if I was there….In these rambles, I could not help remarking with wonder and
admiration...the extraordinary faculty of analysis exhibited by my friend….He
made no secret of the enjoyment he derived from it and would remark with a
smile of proud satisfaction, that, for him, every man had an open window where
his heart was.

The Working Writer

Throughout his career, Poe struggled to make a living from his writing,
publishing a steady stream of short fiction, criticism, and poems in magazines,
newspapers, and the popular new literary anthologies, or “gift books.” These efforts
produced a modest income and made Poe’s name known among the literati. His sharp
critical style, fantastical and ingenious short stories, and the enormously popular poem
“The Raven,” first published in early 1845, brought him wider fame at a national level.
Despite these successes, he often managed to alienate those who could help him most
by engaging in a variety of literary disputes.
For most of his life, Poe dreamed of founding a magazine of his own which
would insure a steady income and in which he could promote his literary and esthetic
theories. But literary magazines were expensive propositions. His efforts to find backers
repeatedly failed, and he had to earn his living by writing on all manner of subjects for
such magazines as The Southern Literary Messenger, Graham’s, and The Broadway Journal.
His financial struggles also led him to search for government posts that never
materialized.

6
The first page of a letter from Edgar Allan Poe to John Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839
Koester Poe Collection

From May 1839 to May 1840 Poe was assistant editor for Burton’s Gentleman’s
Magazine, owned by the actor William Evans “Billy” Burton. Poe published two of his
best-known stories, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “William Wilson” in Burton’s.
John Beauchamp Jones was a Baltimore journalist and Burton’s contributor who
had written to Poe to inform him of some sharp criticism of Burton’s in the Baltimore
Sun. The Sun implied that Burton’s suffered because of Billy Burton’s theatrical
engagements in New York, claiming that as a result, “although this number contains
many excellent articles, there is a palpable want of tact in the manner in which it has
been gotten up.”

7

A letter from Edgar Allan Poe to Robert Hamilton, October 3, 1842
Koester Poe Collection

In this letter, Poe complains to Hamilton, editor of the Ladies’ Companion, about
typographical errors made in the printing of his story “The Landscape-Garden” (this
story later became “The Domain of Arnheim”). As a critic, Poe was notorious for seizing
on small imperfections, so he was understandably sensitive to typographical errors in
his own works. Here, Poe remarks that he is “as straight as judges,” an apparent
allusion to his drinking bout in New York the previous June, when, despondent over
his wife Virginia’s illness from tuberculosis, he paid a drunken visit to a former love,
Mary (Starr) Devereux.

8

A manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Spectacles,” ca. 1844
Koester Poe Collection

In 1844 Poe submitted a manuscript of his story “The Spectacles” to the English poet
Richard Henry Horne in hopes that Horne would sell it for Poe to a London magazine.
Horne was repulsed by this story of a young man who becomes engaged to his great-
great-grandmother because he is too vain to wear spectacles. It was eventually
published in several American magazines and later pirated by the London magazine
Lloyd’s Entertaining Journal. This fair copy in Poe’s meticulous hand is probably the
original manuscript submitted to Horne.

14

The first page of a letter from Edgar Allan Poe to Charles West Thomson, and a
prospectus for Poe’s proposed Penn Magazine, June 28, 1840 [?]
Digital reproduction of the prospectus
Koester Poe Collection

In this letter, Poe solicits financial backing for his proposed Penn Magazine from
Thomson, a Philadelphia poet. Poe also wrote to several key American men of letters—
Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, and Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, most of whom he had attacked either publicly or privately—
describing his plans and asking these writers to contribute to the magazine regularly.
The Penn never materialized. In 1842 Poe began to plan for another magazine,
the Stylus. He briefly acquired a backer who pulled out due to his own financial issues
and concerns about Poe’s drinking.

15

A letter from Edgar Allan Poe to Lea & Blanchard, August 13, 1841
Koester Poe Collection

Lea & Blanchard, publishers of Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in December
1839, declined the offer Poe made in this letter, noting that that volume had not yet
sold. As Lea & Blanchard had written to Poe in September 1839, they would
publish Tales “at our own risque and expense” and noted that “if sold—[the edition]
will pay but a small profit which if realized is to be ours,” while granting Poe the
copyright.

22

The first page of a letter from Edgar Allan Poe to Frederick W. Thomas, May 25, 1842
Koester Poe Collection

Frederick William Thomas was a novelist and poet who became friendly with
Poe in 1840. In May 1842 Thomas wrote to Poe suggesting that Thomas use his
influence with Robert Tyler, the President’s son, to secure a position for Poe in the
Philadelphia Custom House.
After months of uncertainty, Poe traveled to Washington in March 1843 to press
his case and to solicit contributors to his proposed Stylus magazine, but Poe did not
receive the position. Custom House positions offered an aspiring literary man income
and time for writing. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, among others, held
such positions (see, for example, Hawthorne’s famous “Custom House” preface to The
Scarlet Letter).

28

Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane: A Tragedy, 3rd ed. (London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1714)
Koester Poe Collection

This copy of Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane belonged to John Allan, Edgar Allan Poe’s
foster father. Rowe’s work, describing the exploits of a peace-loving Asian conqueror