Edgar Allan Poe
Story Stream
A Descent Into Poe's Maelstrom April 01, 2025
Few American writers are as intriguing as Edgar Allan Poe. The author of stories that are still shockingly violent, Poe himself was something of a Jekyll and Hyde—sensitive and kind when sober, but manic and violent when drunk—who lived much of his l...
The 10 Best Edgar Allan Poe Adaptations October 12, 2023
In the past few years, director Mike Flanagan has embarked on a spooky adaptation tour of sorts. He tackled Stephen King with Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, received massive amounts of praise for his treatment of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hi...
The Andover Bookstore Is the Oldest in the US October 04, 2023
Tucked away on Main Street in Andover is the current home for not only the oldest bookstore in Massachusetts but also the oldest bookstore in the United States.Established in 1809, the same year Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin and Edgar Allan Poe wer...
Edgar Allan Poe's Death Is as Mysterious as His Literature February 23, 2023
Trying to sort through the acres of contradictory evidence about how Edgar Allan Poe lived and died, one is inevitably reminded of a bit of advice found in his satirical short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether”: “Believe nothing you ...
The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe February 17, 2023
In June 1849, when Edgar Allan Poe was 40 years old, he left his mother-in-law and aunt, Maria Clemm, in their New York home to go on a lecture tour. He planned to raise money to start his own literary magazine. It had been a stressful couple of year...
Edgar Allan Poe, Through the Pale Door February 16, 2023
On Oct. 9, 1849, the New-York Tribune published an unusually tart obituary. “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.”...
Poe's Mystifying Novel October 31, 2022
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is the Voynich manuscript of American literature. As the only novel written by Edgar Allan Poe, its historical importance is unquestionable; as a literary work, it is mystifying. Its catalog of atrociti...
The Ongoing Impact of Edgar Allen Poe November 08, 2021
in the early hours of January 19, a shadowy figure glides into the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground through a side-gate and makes his way to a cenotaph. In the biting Baltimore night, the black-clad stranger — in wide-brimmed hat and a long scarf ...
How Poe Anticipated the Modern World July 09, 2021
If you’re anything like me, your knowledge of Edgar Allan Poe is sketchy and cartoonish.He was a writer of scary tales in the 19th century who had a drinking problem, married a cousin when she was 13, lived in poverty in many East Coast cities, and d...
An Edgar Allan Poe for Our Time June 30, 2021
“TRUE! — NERVOUS — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” So begins what may be the most famous short story of all time: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe. First published in 1843, the story reco...
Is Poe the Most Influential American Writer? June 22, 2021
There are many, many biographies of Edgar Allan Poe, the most exhaustive being Arthur Hobson Quinn’s, first published in 1941, the most concise Peter Ackroyd’s 2009 “Poe: A Life Cut Short.”...
Poe’s Eureka Moment June 16, 2021
Viewers of “The Good Place,” the TV comedy series and ersatz philosophy seminar, learned in an early episode that the prophets of the world’s major religions have figured out only 5% of the mysteries of the cosmos. But (according to the show) one nig...
Edgar Allan Poe’s Other Obsession June 11, 2021
In the early and macabre days of coronavirus shutdowns, Edgar Allan Poe was trending. “The Masque of the Red Death,” his Gothic tale from 1842, became in March of 2020 a go-to source for allegory: A prince whose state is overrun with something like h...
Poe in the City December 11, 2020
The Man of the Crowd, by Scott Peeples, has something for everyone. It should be equally attractive to Edgar Allan Poe scholars, aficionados, and those who simply want to read more of Poe’s stories, poems, and essays. The volume is pitched so that it...
Horace's How-To June 06, 2020
Among the previously uncollected pieces in Donald Barthelme’s Sixty Stories is a six-pager called “How I Write My Songs.” The “I,” like many of Barthelme’s narrators, is initially anonymous; we learn his name—it turns out to be Bill B. White—only in ...
How Poe Became Our Era's Storyteller January 16, 2019
Elisabeth Becker went all the way from Wisconsin to Philadelphia last July to introduce her two young children to America's sacred text—not the Declaration of Independence, but Edgar Allan Poe's “The Raven.” She walked the kids into one of the most i...
