The Raven

by Edgar Allan Poe

He borrowed the idea of a talking raven from Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge and selected a frequently recurring theme in his work—the death of a loved one. Having lost both his parents before the age of three, watched as death claimed the mother of a close friend at school, and suffered through three years of his wife’s five-year battle against tuberculosis, Poe knew a few things about loss.

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!

During this time, Poe’s foster father, John Allan, had become extremely ill. Poe traveled to Richmond to call on Allan but was angrily turned away. In March he died, leaving Poe nothing. Even Allan’s illegitimate children received mentions in his will, but not the foster son in whom he saw such genius.

Poe did not think highly of his own work, later calling it “a very silly book.” The seafaring adventure, however, did apparently inspire a young Herman Melville, who wrote the considerably less silly Moby-Dick.

Between December 1840 and January 1843, Poe published eight of his most-loved short stories, including “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” regarded almost universally as the first true detective story—and certainly the direct ancestor of all that have followed in the genre.

By this time Poe, Virginia, her mother, and their black cat Catterina (or Kate) had moved to New York, where Poe joined the staff of the new Evening Mirror, as an editor. They were soon settled into the farmhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Henry Brennan, near what is now 84th Street and Broadway, close to the Hudson and a large rock called “Mount Tom” that overlooked the river. Poe and Virginia enjoyed sitting on it and gazing across the then-rural riverland north of the city.

On January 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died after a five-year struggle with tuberculosis. She was twenty-four years old.

“I have no desire to live since I have done Eureka. I could accomplish nothing more.”

Helen was fascinated by transcendentalism and the occult, dressed eccentrically, and loved Poe’s poetry and prose.

Unconscious or delirious for most of the next few days, Poe died early in the morning of Sunday, October 7, 1849. No definitive cause was ever found for his death. “Congestion of the brain,” a common euphemism for death from alcoholism, was the reason given by the October 9 Baltimore Clipper.

It began: “Edgar Allan Poe is dead.…This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.…he had few or no friends.”

For the third volume, which appeared in late 1850, Griswold prepared a biographical sketch, entitled “A Memoir of the Author,” which painted Poe as a depraved, cynical, and drug-addicted lunatic. Griswold forged letters, passed along half-truths, and twisted the facts to suit his personal view of Poe. The Works sold, and Griswold’s distortion of Poe’s life became part of the author’s mystique.

Poe influenced writers from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne to Ray Bradbury and Stephen King;

Charles Beaudelaire’s translations of his work made him more famous in Europe than in America for a time; societies, museums, and landmarks to Poe exist from Baltimore and Richmond to Philadelphia, Boston, and New York; and the highest honor an American mystery author can receive is the Edgar, named in honor of Poe by the Mystery Writers of America. The admiration and success that largely escaped Poe during his short and often unhappy life came in ever-mounting waves after his death. The works, after all, speak for themselves.