Tag Archives: poetry

By the Name of Annabel Lee

One of the questions the Poe Museum’s tour guides hear most often is, “Who is Annabel Lee?” Since Poe’s classic poem “Annabel Lee” first appeared in print two days after the author’s death in 1849, readers have speculated about whether or not the poem refers to a real person from the author’s life. Opening just…

Poe Museum launches campaign to save endangered illustrations for “The Raven”

Kickstarter project has goal of $60,000 in 45 days Richmond, Va. – Today the Edgar Allan Poe Museum launched a campaign to raise $60,000 through Kickstarter to preserve, prepare and publish a book of James Carlings’ original illustrations for “The Raven.” Dating to the 1880s, these original illustrations were named one of “Virginia’s Top 10…

Edgar Allan Poe on Valentine’s Day

It’s Valentine’s Day, a holiday Americans celebrated even back in Edgar Allan Poe’s time. In fact, one of his friends, Anna Charlotte Lynch, hosted an annual St. Valentine’s Day party at her home in New York. Throughout 1845, Poe was a favorite guest at Lynch’s weekly literary soirees. In her words, “During the time that…

Charles Dickens Meets Edgar Allan Poe

Charles Dickens turned 200 today. Many readers know the novels of Dickens, but few may know that he and Poe were personally acquainted. Edgar Allan Poe was an admirer of Dickens’s works since “strongly recommending” Dickens’s works to American readers in a June 1836 review from the Southern Literary Messenger. In an 1839 issue of…

More Selections from James Carling’s “Raven” Drawings

The Poe Museum’s new special exhibit “Stormier, Wilder, and More Weird: James Carling and ‘The Raven’” opened on January 14, and visitors were in awe of Carling’s 43 masterful drawings, which fill both floors of the Exhibit Building. The artist who produced these drawings, James Carling, was born in 1857 in Liverpool. He was fifth…

Stormier, Wilder and More Weird: James Carling and “The Raven”

In 1887, the promising young artist James Carling was buried in a pauper’s grave in Liverpool. He was only twenty-nine. During his lifetime, he had been celebrated as the “Fastest Drawer in the World” and the “Lightning Caricaturist.” Though his “lightning” drawing skills had brought him from a childhood in poverty on the streets of…