At an auction held on June 28, 1825, merchant John Allan purchased a Richmond estate. Actually, he purchased parts of three lots from the late Joseph Gallego and the late John Richard. One of those lots included the mansion nicknamed “Moldavia.” The name was granted by earlier owners, Molly and David Randolph. The brick house included a…
MURRAY ELLISON–Urban crime was an area of acute interest in the nineteenth century in America and Europe because the public feared that it was rampant and out of the control of the police. To respond to this concern, Poe demonstrates increasingly complex aspects of ratiocination in each of his three Auguste C. Dupin detective-based tales….
Extracted from Dr. Murray Ellison’s MA Thesis on Poe and 19th-Century Science from Virginia Commonwealth University, 2015© In Poe’s Imaginary Journey, “Mellonta Tauta” (1849), the narrator, Pundit, embarks on a balloon trip to outer space in the year of 2848 and writes a letter narrating the details of his journey. The name that Poe gives…
Poe Writes on Illness and Poverty in Poe Museum’s Newest Acquisition RICHMOND–For the first time in 15 years, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia has added an original Edgar Allan Poe letter to its collection. There will be a special viewing of the letter on April 25 from 6-9 p.m. during the first…
“The captain’s gray hairs are records of the past, and his grayer eyes are Sybils of the future. The cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange, iron clasped folios, moldering instruments of science and obsolete long-forgotten charts”– “MS. Found in a Bottle” by Edgar Allan Poe (1833) Poe illustrated his concerns about the uncertainties and…
Written by Murray Ellison, 2015 As noted in Part I of this column, J. Harris was one of the many researchers who connected Locke’s “Moon Hoax” with Poe’s April 1844 New York Sun columns on the “Balloon Hoax.” As Eric Carlson comments, “In the considerable rush for copies” for the “Balloon Hoax,” they “were sold…
Black Cats & REDRUM The Horrors of Intemperance from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King As part of our Summer Sunday Reading Series the Poe Museum presents a new lecture on the influence of Poe’s intemperance narratives on the horror author, Stephen King. This lecture will be presented by Dr. David Pratt, Ph.D on September…
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,…
Written by Rob Velella, August 19, 2009, as part of “The Edgar A. Poe Calendar: 365 Days of the Master of the Macabre and the Mystery“ August 19th, 1843 saw the first publication of one of Poe’s most famous works. The Saturday Evening Post published “The Black Cat” in its issue with that date. In fact, the…
Written by Rob Velella, August 14, 2009, as part of “The Edgar A. Poe Calendar: 365 Days of the Master of the Macabre and the Mystery“ Poe’s place in literary history is occasionally questioned. Should he be considered a master of American literature? Does he deserve a place in the canon? Is he really important?…
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