Category Archives: Other

Murders in the Rue Morgue: Dupin Solves a Gruesome Murder

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), is the first detective story written by Edgar Allan Poe and is considered to be the first-ever story of the detective genre, In this fictional short-story, the Paris Police Chief (the Prefect) asks Poe’s Detective C. Auguste Dupin to solve the violent murder of a mother and daughter….

Poe Museum Receives 2019 Experts’ Choice Award

We are proud to announce that the Poe Museum has received a 2019 Experts’ Choice Award for another year. We ranked sixth out of hundreds of Richmond attractions and we want to thank all of our guests over the years for helping us achieve such an exciting award. Now in its fourth year, Experts’ Choice continues to…

Poe Has “Some Words With A Mummy”

An excerpt from Murray Ellison’s 2015 MA Thesis from Virginia Commonwealth University on Poe and 19th-Century Science © Poe’s tale, “Some Words with a Mummy” (1845) provides one of the most revealing views about the low value he places in nineteenth-century science. Although the unnamed narrator of this short story, who also speaks in the…

“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…

The Poe & Science Series

Poe Exposes Maelzel’s Automated Chess Player, Part II Murray Ellison | Dec. 2nd, 2017 In 1836, Poe asks readers of the Richmond-based Southern Literary Messenger to ponder the implications for the future if a machine could calculate without human input. He writes, “There is no analogy, whatever, between the operations of the chess-player and those…

Edgar Allan Poe and the Culture of Mourning

From train accidents, bridge collapses, and steamboat wrecks, to diseases such as the “White Plague,” or tuberculosis, it is undeniable that the nineteenth century was a witness of tragedy and deep mourning. Although the idea of mourning and mourning culture is not exclusive to the 1800s, it is safe to say the 1800s may have…

The Critic Who Burned “Fairy-Land”

Editor Nathaniel Parker Willis once burned a manuscript of Poe’s “Fairy-Land.” That seems like pretty harsh treatment from a literary editor; and we wonder why such atmospheric lines as “Dim vales-and shadowy floods- / And cloudy-looking woods” might receive such severe critical feedback? The answer lies in comparing the poem we commonly know with its…

“Lines on Ale” and Other Misattributed Poems

I recently came across a curious poem in a Poe anthology entitled “To Isadore.” I was not familiar with it, but it certainly sounded like Poe’s voice throughout the stanzas, at least so I thought. The publishers sure fooled me, for lo’ and behold, it was deemed as being misattributed to Poe and it had…

Poe’s Irish Eyes Are Smiling

We are familiar with Poe’s ties to Scotland through his (unofficially) adoptive father, John Allan; but, did you know that Poe officially carried Celtic roots in his blood? There is one thing that Maria Clemm Poe, David Poe Jr., and Edgar all have in common, being that they come from Irish roots. Muddy, Poe’s mother-in-law…

2016 Young Writers’ Conference

The Edgar Allan Poe Museum presents THE 2016 YOUNG WRITERS’ CONFERENCE June 19-23, 2016 DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS EXTENDED TO MAY 1! The Edgar Allan Poe Museum, located in Poe’s hometown of Richmond, Virginia, is proud to announce its 2016 Young Writers’ Conference, to be held June 19-23, 2016.  The Young Writers’ Conference is a five-day…