The World of Edgar Allan Poe

This post is designed to provide a home for a few stray bits of Poeana I've encountered here and there. 1. The Case of the Postponed Pym...

"The mysteries of his [Poe's] life were never revealed to anyone, but his intimates well understood that to mystify his hearer was...

Our favorite Raven was, of course, born simply as "Edgar Poe," acquiring his middle name after he became the foster-child of John ...

4. Frances Sargent Locke Osgood In Osgood's case, it has not been suggested that she herself was the inspiration for "Annabel Lee,...

"Do you know Sarah Helen Whitman? Of course, you have heard it rumored that she is to marry Poe. Well, she has seemed to me a good girl...

"History is full of calumnies, of calumnies that can never be effaced." -Henry Hallam S.S. Osgood self-portrait France...

"'The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether.' 'Perha...

Elizabeth Oakes Smith may have been a successful poet, magazinist, lecturer and essayist, but where Edgar Allan Poe was concerned, she is be...

When examining the relationship between Frances S. Osgood and Poe, one crucial detail that is always overlooked is the simple fact that afte...

"A poltroon charges his foe, by instinct, with precisely that vice or meanness which the pricking of his (the poltroon's) conscienc...

"The touchstone by which falsehood is detected is inconsistency. In a true narrative, inconsistencies are impossible." -Jeremy Be...

One of the more irritating traits found among Poe's biographers is their tendency to repeat the same statements over and over without ev...