Deathday: Poet and Poe Historian Lizette Woodworth Reese 1935

Lizette Woodworth Reese (January 9, 1856 – December 17, 1935) was an American poet. Born in the Waverly section of Baltimore, Maryland, she was a school teacher from 1873 to 1918. During the 1920s, she became a prominent literary figure, receiving critical praise and recognition, in particular from H. L. Mencken, himself from Baltimore. She has been cited as an influence on younger women poets and has been compared to Emily Dickinson.

-- wiki

Lizette Woodworth Reese was born and raised in Waverly, Maryland, just off the road that ran between Baltimore and York, Pennsylvania. She began her teaching career at age 17 at nearby St. John's Episcopal Church's parish school and in 1901, moved to Baltimore's Western High School, where she taught English until she retired in 1921.

Johns Hopkins University professor and long-time acquaintance David M. Robinson described her this way: "With her sound-minded simplicity, [she] seemed to me like a charming child. But she had a genial humanism equal to that of the ancient Greeks… She was a lovely little lady with a staccato touch in her voice and sometimes a lively, lilting lisp. But she had a wonderful, strong, and fearless personality."

Poet Amy Lowell said that Reese's poem "Tears" was "as fine a sonnet as any by Elizabeth Barrett Browning." That poem was first published in Scribner's magazine. Reese said that the check from Scribner's arrived just a few hours after her father's death, "as the crape was being hung from the door."

Reese lived in her childhood home until her mother died, lived the last 20 years of her life with her sister's family, and died at Church Home and Infirmary (as did Edgar Allan Poe 90 years earlier). She's buried in her old neighborhood—now in the heart of Baltimore—in the graveyard next to St. John's Church.

-- The Baltimore Literary Heritage Project

Lizette Woodworth Reese

1856–-1935

American poet, prose writer, and short story writer

Introduction

Although relatively unknown today, Reese was a popular American poet during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Praised for her concise style, her emotional yet never sentimental voice, and her nostalgic subjects, Reese earned a devoted following among critics and the public throughout her life. However, with the advent of modern poetic styles and her death, Reese faded into relative obscurity. Today she is known primarily as a transitional writer, bridging the gap between the Victorian and modern poets. In addition to her poetry, Reese published three books of recollections of late nineteenth-century small town life.

Biographical Information

Reese was born in the small Maryland town of Waverly, then known as Huntingdon, on January 9, 1856. One of four sisters, Reese remained in the Baltimore area throughout her lifetime. After attending public schools, which Reese supplemented with a voracious appetite for classic English literature, she secured a position as a teacher at Saint John's Parish School in 1873. In June 1874, she published her first poem “The Deserted House,” in Southern Magazine. Although the poem lacked the skill of her later work, Reese established the themes and style for which she would be known: a solemn tone, the theme of eternal nature juxtaposed against the decay of society, the personification of nature, the simple and efficient use of language, and a brevity of description. During the next thirteen years Reese continued to write and publish in magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Monthly and Scribner's. In 1887 Reese used her own funds to publish her first collection of poems, A Branch of May. She sent copies of the work to such noted critics as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Dean Howells, and Edmund Clarence Stedman, who would become an influential figure in her career. Critics responded enthusiastically to her short, straightforward poetry which differed from the heavy, grandiose verse of the Victorians. Reese was able to publish her second volume of poetry with Houghton Mifflin in 1891. Upon the publication of her third collection in 1896, Reese had established herself as a noteworthy poet in America and England. After teaching in the Baltimore public schools for forty-five years while concurrently pursuing a writing career, Reese retired in 1921 and devoted more of her time to writing. Before her death in 1935 she published five more collections of poetry and wrote two works of childhood recollections. After her death a final volume of poetry, The Old House in the Country, was published in 1936.

Major Works

Reese published eleven works of poetry, spanning from her first self-published collection A Branch of May in 1887 to her posthumously published The Old House in the Country in 1936. Although she acquired greater skill throughout her career and experimented somewhat with form, her work is generally uniform in style, voice, tone, and content. Reese rejected social commentary and observations on modernity and industrialization, instead focusing on aspects of nature and life which she had witnessed in her quiet rural surroundings in Waverly. She chose such subjects as death, religion, and pastoral scenes. In 1909 she published A Wayside Lute, which contained her best known and most highly regarded poem, the sonnet “Tears.” Reese primarily wrote short, rhymed, metered verse, often employing the sonnet form. She was known and admired for her concise voice and unsentimental tone which differed from the earlier Victorian poets and gave her poetry a distinctly modern air. In 1927 she published Little Henrietta, a collection of thirty-nine short poems that narrate the story of her cousin Henrietta Matilda. This work constitutes her only unrhymed poetry.

Critical Reception

During her lifetime Reese enjoyed popularity from critics and the public alike, encountering little difficulty publishing her poetry. Although critics agreed that she was among the minor poets of her age, the publication of each of her volumes was met with favorable reviews. However, Reese's popularity did not sustain past her death. Although her works are still included in anthologies and scholars, have conceded her role as a transitional figure in American poetry, little new critical scholarship has been written about Reese in the second half of the twentieth century. During her lifetime such reviewers as Genevieve Taggard, Louis Untermeyer, and Carlin T. Kindilien compared Reese's writing to Emily Dickinson's poetry, although each noted that Reese failed to achieve the sharpness and skill of Dickinson. Kindilien observed, “Like Emily Dickinson, Lizette Reese turned from the American scene and wrote a personal poetry that analyzed universals, but, unlike the Amherst poet, she was not to receive the critical attention that would have made known her achievement.” Other critics have compared her writing with that of Robert Herrick and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Reviewers have praised her brevity, concision, phrasing, and restraint. Though her tone was nostalgic and her subject matter often somber, commentators have noted that through her sincerity and simplicity Reese's poetry never sounded sentimental. However, Mark Van Doren has argued that her poetry “lack[ed] original salt” and Louise Bogan has despaired the absence of intellectuality and range in Reese's work.

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Deathday: Poe's Mother Elizabeth Arnold Poe 1811

Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe (1787 – December 8, 1811) was an English-born American actress and the mother of the American author Edgar Allan Poe.

Life and career

Eliza Arnold was born to Henry and Elizabeth Arnold in London in the spring of 1787.[1] Her mother was a stage actress in London from 1791 to 1795. Henry died in 1789 and, in November 1795, only mother and daughter sailed from England to the United States, arriving in Boston, Massachusetts on January 3, 1796.[1]

Eliza debuted on the Boston stage at the age of nine, only three months after her arrival in the United States.[2] She played a character named Biddy Blair in a farce called Miss in Her Teens by David Garrick and was praised in the Portland Herald:[1] "Miss Arnold, in Miss Biddy, exceeded all praise.. Although a miss of only nine years old, her powers as an Actress will do credit to any of her sex of maturer age".[2] Later that year, Elizabeth married a musician named Charles Tubbs, a man who had sailed with the Arnolds from England. The small family joined with a manager named Mr. Edgar to form a theater troupe called the Charleston Comedians. Elizabeth, Eliza's mother, died sometime while this troupe was traveling through North Carolina.[3] Little is known about her death but she disappears from theatrical records in 1798 and it is presumed she died shortly after.[2]

After her mother's death, Eliza stayed with the theater troupe. She followed the tradition at the time for actors to travel from city to city to perform for as long as several months before moving on. The actors, theaters, and audiences had a wide range of sophistication. One of the most impressive venues at which Eliza performed was the Chestnut Street Theater near Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which seated two thousand.[3] Over the course of her career, Eliza played some 300 parts, as well as choral and dancing roles, including William Shakespeare characters Juliet Capulet and Ophelia.[2]

In the summer of 1802, at the age of fifteen, Eliza married Charles Hopkins.[2] Hopkins died three years later in October 1805, possibly due to yellow fever, leaving Eliza an eighteen-year old widow.[4] The Baltimore-born David Poe, Jr. saw Eliza performing in Norfolk, Virginia and decided to join her acting troupe, abandoning his family's plans for him to study law.[5] Poe married Eliza only six months after Hopkins's death in 1806.[6]

The couple traveled throughout New England and the rest of the northeast, playing in various towns such as Richmond, Philadelphia, and at an outdoor summer theater in New York City before finally settling in Boston. They stayed in Boston for three consecutive seasons of thirty weeks each in a theater that fit an audience of about one thousand.[4] Reviews at the time often remarked on Eliza's "interesting figure" and "sweetly melodious voice".[5] Though times were difficult, the couple had two sons; William Henry Leonard was born in January 1807 (nine months after their wedding)[6] and Edgar was born on January 19, 1809, at a boarding-house near Boston Common, close from where their troupe was performing.[7] Eliza performed until 10 days before Edgar's birth and may have named her second son after the Mr. Edgar who led the Charleston Comedians.[8]

The family relocated to New York in the summer of 1809. Eliza had often been praised for her acting ability while David's performances were routinely criticized harshly, possibly due to his own stage fright.[4] David, hot-headed and an alcoholic,[6] abandoned the stage and his family about six weeks after moving to New York.[9] Though David's fate is unknown, there is some evidence to suggest he died in Norfolk on December 11, 1811.[10] In his absence, Eliza gave birth to a third child, a daughter she called Rosalie, in December 1810. Rosalie was later described as "backward" and she may have been mentally retarded. Eliza continued traveling as she performed.

Death

In 1811, while staying at a boarding house in Richmond, Virginia for a performance, Eliza began spitting blood.[11] Her performances became less frequent until October 1811 when she stopped appearing altogether.[12] Her last performance was on October 11, 1811, as Countess Wintersen in a play called The Stranger.[13]

Friends and fellow actors Mr. and Mrs. Luke Usher (the name may have inspired Poe's tale "The Fall of the House of Usher"[14]) took care of the children during Eliza's illness and many in the Richmond area took an interest in her health. On November 29 of that year, the Richmond Theater announced a benefit performance on her behalf. A local publication, the Enquirer, reported her need for help: "On this night, Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of disease and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance and asks it perhaps for the last time".[10]

Eliza finally died on Sunday morning, December 8, 1811, at the age of twenty-four[12] surrounded by her children.[7] It is generally assumed that Eliza Poe died of tuberculosis.[1][15] She is buried at St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond. Though her actual burying place is unknown, a memorial marks the general area.

After her death, her three children were split up. William Henry Leonard Poe lived with his paternal grandparents in Baltimore, Edgar Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan in Richmond, and Rosalie Poe was adopted by William and Jane Scott Mackenzie in Richmond.

Influence

Though he was young when she died, Edgar Poe was heavily impacted by Eliza Poe's death and many of his works reflect her influence. His first published work "Metzengerstein" features a fire burning down a large home, possibly reflecting the fire that destroyed the Richmond Theatre, where she had performed. The fire occurred in December 1811, only three weeks after her death.[16] The early loss of his mother and other women, including his wife Virginia, may also have inspired Edgar Poe's often-used literary theme of dying women.[17] This theme is readily present in works like "The Raven".[18]

Notes

1.^ Sova, 192
2.^ Meyers, 2
3.^ Silverman, 2
4.^ Silverman, 3
5.^ Stashower, 34
6.^ Meyers, 3
7.^ Stashower, 35
8.^ Silverman, 5–6
9.^ Silverman, 7
10.^ Meyers, 6
11.^ Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972: 25. ISBN 0807123218
12.^ Silverman, 8
13.^ Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849. New York: G. K. Hall and Co., 1987: 12. ISBN 0783814011
14.^ Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1934: 683.
15.^ Stashower, 7
16.^ Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005: 38. ISBN 1-57806-721-9
17.^ Weekes, Karen. "Poe's feminine ideal", collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002: 149. ISBN 0521797276
18.^ Kopley, Richard and Kevin J. Hayes. "Two verse masterworks: 'The Raven' and 'Ulalume'", collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002: 194. ISBN 0521797276

Sources

Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York City: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8154-1038-7.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York City: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0-06-092331-8.
Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4161-X.
Stashower, Daniel. The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder. New York: Dutton, 2006. ISBN 0-525-94981-X.

Further reading

Smith, Geddeth. The Brief Career of Eliza Poe. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press: April 1988.

"Ligeia" Published 1838

"Ligeia" is an early short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1838. The story follows an unnamed narrator and his wife Ligeia, a beautiful and intelligent raven-haired woman. She falls ill, composes "The Conqueror Worm," and quotes lines attributed to Joseph Glanvill (which suggest that life is sustainable only through willpower) shortly before dying. After her death, the narrator marries the Lady Rowena. Rowena becomes ill and she dies as well. The distraught narrator stays with her body overnight and watches as Rowena slowly comes back from the dead – though she has transformed into Ligeia. The story may be the narrator's opium-induced hallucination and there is debate whether the story was a satire. After the story's first publication in The American Museum, it was heavily revised and reprinted throughout Poe's life.

Plot summary

The unnamed narrator describes the qualities of Ligeia, a beautiful, passionate and intellectual woman, raven-haired and dark-eyed, that he thinks he remembers meeting "in some large, old decaying city near the Rhine." He is unable to recall anything about the history of Ligeia, including her family's name, but remembers her beautiful appearance. Her beauty, however, is not conventional. He describes her as emaciated, with some "strangeness." He describes her face in detail, from her "faultless" forehead to the "divine orbs" of her eyes. They marry, and Ligeia impresses her husband with her immense knowledge of physical and mathematical science, and her proficiency in classical languages. She begins to show her husband her knowledge of metaphysical and "forbidden" wisdom.

After an unspecified length of time Ligeia becomes ill, struggles internally with human mortality, and ultimately dies. The narrator, grief-stricken, buys and refurbishes an abbey in England. He soon enters into a loveless marriage with "the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine."

In the second month of the marriage, Rowena begins to suffer from worsening fever and anxiety. One night, when she is about to faint, the narrator pours her a goblet of wine. Drugged with opium, he sees (or thinks he sees) drops of "a brilliant and ruby colored fluid" fall into the goblet. Her condition rapidly worsens, and a few days later she dies and her body is wrapped for burial.

As the narrator keeps vigil overnight, he notices a brief return of color to Rowena's cheeks. She repeatedly shows signs of reviving, before relapsing into apparent death. As he attempts resuscitation, the revivals become progressively stronger, but the relapses more final. As dawn breaks, and the narrator is sitting emotionally exhausted from the night's struggle, the shrouded body revives once more, stands and walks into the middle of the room. When he touches the figure, its head bandages fall away to reveal masses of raven hair and dark eyes: Rowena has transformed into Ligeia.

Analysis

The narrator relies on Ligeia as if he were a child, looking on her with "child-like confidence." On her death, he is "a child groping benighted" with "childlike perversity." It has been suggested that, despite this dependency on her, the narrator has a simultaneous desire to forget her (perhaps causing him to be unable to love Rowena). This desire to forget is exemplified in his inability to recall Ligeia's last name.[1] The story tells us however that the narrator never knew her last name at all.

Ligeia, the narrator tells us, is extremely intelligent, "such as I have never known in a woman." Most importantly, she served as the narrator's teacher in "metaphysical investigation", passing on "wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden!" So, her knowledge in mysticism, combined with an intense desire for life may have led to her revival. The opening epigraph, which is repeated in the body of the story, is attributed to Joseph Glanvill, though this quote has not been found in Glanvill's extant work. Poe may have fabricated the quote and attached Glanvill's name in order to associate with Glanvill's belief in witchcraft.[2]

Ligeia and Rowena serve as aesthetic opposites:[3] Ligeia is raven-haired from a city by the Rhine while Rowena (presumably named after the character in Ivanhoe) is a blonde Anglo-Saxon. This symbolic opposition implies the contrast between German and English romanticism.[4]

Exactly what Poe was trying to say in the metamorphosis scene has been debated, fueled in part by one of Poe's personal letters in which he denies that Ligeia was reborn in Rowena's body[5] (a statement he later retracts). If Rowena had actually transformed into the dead Ligeia, it is only evidenced in the words of the narrator, leaving room to question its validity. The narrator has already been established as an opium addict, making him an unreliable narrator. In fact, perhaps tellingly, the narrator early in the story describes Ligeia's beauty as "the radiance of an opium-dream." He also tells us that "in the excitement of my opium dreams, I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night... as if... I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned... upon the earth." This may be interpreted as evidence that Ligeia's return was nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination.

If Ligeia's return from death is literal, however, it seems to stem from her assertion that a person dies only by a weak will. This implies, then, that a strong will can keep someone alive. It is unclear, however, if it is Ligeia's will or her husband's will that brings Ligeia back from the dead.[6]

The poem within the story, "The Conqueror Worm," also leads to some questioning of Ligeia's alleged resurrection. The poem essentially shows an admittance of her own inevitable mortality. The inclusion of the bitter poem may have been meant to be ironic or a parody of the convention at the time, both in literature and in life. In the mid-19th century it was common to emphasize the sacredness of death and the beauty of dying (consider Charles Dickens's Little Johnny character in Our Mutual Friend and or the death of Helen Burns in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre). Instead, Ligeia speaks of fear personified in the "blood-red thing."[7] Other interpretations have been suggested however.[8]

Poe's friend and fellow Southern writer Philip Pendleton Cooke suggested the story would have been more artistic if Rowena's possession by Ligeia was more gradual; Poe later agreed, though he had already used a slower possession in "Morella."[9] Poe also wrote that he should have had the Ligeia-possessed Rowena relapse back to her true self so that she could be entombed as Rowena, "the bodily alterations having gradually faded away."[10] However, in a subsequent letter he retracted this statement.

As satire

There has been some debate that Poe may have intended "Ligeia" to be a satire of Gothic fiction. The year that "Ligeia" was published, Poe published only two other prose pieces: "Siope—A Fable" and "The Psyche Zenobia," both Gothic-styled satires.[11] Supporting evidence for this theory includes the implication that Ligeia is from Germany, a main source of Gothic fiction in the 19th century, and that the description of her hints at much but says nothing, especially in the description of her eyes. The narrator describes their "expression," which he admits is a "word of no meaning." The story also suggests Ligeia is a transcendentalist, a group of people Poe often criticized.[12]

Major themes

Death of a beautiful woman (see also: "Berenice", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "Morella")
Resurrection (see also: "The Fall of the House of Usher", "Morella", "Metzengerstein")
Substance abuse (see also: "The Black Cat", "Hop-Frog")

Publication history

"Ligeia" was first published in the September 18, 1838, edition of the American Museum, a magazine edited by two of Poe's friends, Dr. Nathan C. Brooks and Dr. Joseph E. Snodgrass. The magazine paid Poe $10 for "Ligeia."[13]

The story was extensively revised throughout its publication history. It was reprinted in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), the one volume of Phantasy Pieces (1842), and Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1845), the New York World (February 15, 1845), and the Broadway Journal (September 27, 1845). The poem "The Conqueror Worm" was first incorporated into the text (as a poem composed by Ligeia) in the New York World.[14]

Critical reception

Charles Eames of The New World commented: "The force and boldness of the conception and the high artistic skill, with which the writer's purpose is wrought out, are equally admirable."[15] Thomas Dunn English, writing in the October 1845 Aristidean, said that "Ligeia" was "the most extraordinary, of its kind, of his productions."[16]

Irish critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw said, "The story of the Lady Ligeia is not merely one of the wonders of literature: it is unparalleled and unapproached."

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Roger Corman adapted the story into The Tomb of Ligeia in 1964. It would be the last of Corman's eight film adaptations of works by Edgar Allan Poe.

Ligeia's theme of the death and resurrection of a beloved woman was subsequently developed by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo.

The story has also recently been adapted into the 2008 independent feature Edgar Allan Poe's Ligeia by writer John Shirley. The film stars Wes Bentley, Michael Madsen, and Eric Roberts.

References

1.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 139–140. ISBN 0-06-092331-8
2.^ Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972: 248. ISBN 0-8071-2321-8
3.^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987: 83. ISBN 0-300-03773-2
4.^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women" collected in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, edited by Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge University Press, 1993: 119–120. ISBN 0-521-42243-4
5.^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. "Poe, 'Ligeia,' and the Problem of Dying Women" collected in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, edited by Kenneth Silverman. Cambridge University Press, 1993: 119. ISBN 0-521-42243-4
6.^ Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972: 249. ISBN 0-8071-2321-8
7.^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987: 1–2. ISBN 0-300-03773-2
8.^ Mabbott, T. O. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Poems. University of Illinois Press, 2000. ISBN 0-252-06921-8
9.^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 270–271. ISBN 0-8018-5730-9
10.^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 271. ISBN 0-8018-5730-9
11.^ Griffith, Clark. "Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics" in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe's Tales. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971: 64.
12.^ Griffith, Clark. "Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics" in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe's Tales. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971: 66.
13.^ Ostram, John Ward. "Poe's Literary Labors and Rewards" in Myths and Reality: The Mysterious Mr. Poe. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1987: 38.
14.^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001: 134. ISBN 0-8160-4161-X
15.^ Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1987: 502. ISBN 0-8161-8734-7

16.^ Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1987: 586–587. ISBN 0-7838-1401-1

Happy Birthday! Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe 1822

Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (née Clemm; August 15, 1822 – January 30, 1847) was the wife of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The couple were first cousins and married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 24. Some biographers have suggested that the couple's relationship was more like that between brother and sister than like husband and wife in that they might have never consummated their marriage. In January 1842 she contracted tuberculosis and died of the disease in January 1847 at the age of 24 in the family's cottage outside New York City.

Along with other family members, Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe lived together off and on for several years before their marriage. The couple often moved to accommodate Poe's employment, living intermittently in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. A few years after their wedding, Poe was involved in a substantial scandal involving Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet. Rumors about amorous improprieties on her husband's part affected Virginia Poe so much that on her deathbed she claimed that Ellet had murdered her. After her death, her body was eventually placed under the same memorial marker as her husband's in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, Maryland. Only one image of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has been authenticated: a watercolor portrait painted several hours after her death.

The disease and eventual death of his wife had a substantial effect on Edgar Allan Poe, who became despondent and turned to alcohol to cope. Her struggles with illness and death are believed to have affected his poetry and prose, where dying young women appear as a frequent motif, as in "Annabel Lee," "The Raven," and "Ligeia."

Biography

Early life

Virginia Eliza Clemm was born on August 15, 1822[1] and named after an older sister who had died as an infant[2] only ten days earlier.[3] Her father William Clemm, Jr. was a hardware merchant in Baltimore.[4] He had married Maria Poe, Virginia's mother, on July 12, 1817,[5] after the death of his first wife, Maria's first cousin Harriet.[6] Clemm had five children from his previous marriage and went on to have three more with Maria.[4] After his death in 1826, he left very little to the family[7] and relatives offered no financial support because they had opposed the marriage.[4] Maria supported the family by sewing and taking in boarders, aided with an annual $240 pension granted to her mother Elizabeth Cairnes, who was paralyzed and bedridden.[7] Elizabeth received this pension on behalf of her late husband, "General" David Poe, a former quartermaster in Maryland who had loaned money to the state.[8]

Edgar Poe first met his cousin Virginia in August 1829, four months after his discharge from the Army. She was seven at the time.[9] In 1832, the family – made up of Elizabeth, Maria, Virginia, and Virginia's brother Henry,[9] – was able to use Elizabeth's pension to rent a home at what was then 3 North Amity Street in Baltimore.[10] Poe's older brother William Henry Leonard Poe, who had been living with the family,[9] had recently died on August 1, 1831.[11] Poe joined the household in 1833[12] and was soon smitten by a neighbor named Mary Devereaux. The young Virginia served as a messenger between the two, at one point retrieving a lock of Devereaux's hair to give to Poe.[13] Elizabeth Cairnes Poe died on July 7, 1835, effectively ending the family's income and making their financial situation even more difficult.[14] Henry died around this time, sometime before 1836, leaving Virginia as Maria Clemm's only surviving child.[15]

In August 1835, Poe left the destitute family behind and moved to Richmond, Virginia to take a job at the Southern Literary Messenger.[16] While Poe was away from Baltimore, another cousin, Neilson Poe, the husband of Virginia's half-sister Josephine Clemm,[17] heard that Edgar was considering marrying Virginia. Neilson offered to take her in and have her educated in an attempt to prevent the girl's marriage to Edgar at such a young age, though suggesting that the option could be reconsidered later.[18] Edgar called Neilson, the owner of a newspaper in Baltimore, Maryland, his "bitterest enemy" and interpreted his cousin's actions as an attempt at breaking his connection with Virginia.[19] On August 29, 1835,[19] Edgar wrote an emotional letter to Maria, declaring that he was "blinded with tears while writing,"[17] and pleading that she allow Virginia to make her own decision.[20] Encouraged by his employment at the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe offered to provide financially for Maria, Virginia and Henry if they moved to Richmond.[21]

Marriage

Marriage plans were confirmed and Poe returned to Baltimore to file for a marriage license on September 22, 1835. The couple might have been quietly married as well, though accounts are unclear.[22] Their only public ceremony was in Richmond on May 16, 1836, when they were married by a Presbyterian minister named Rev. Amasa Converse.[23] Poe was 27 and Virginia was 13, though her age was listed as 21.[23] This marriage bond was filed in Richmond and included an affidavit from Thomas W. Cleland confirming the bride's alleged age.[24] The ceremony was held in the evening at the home of a Mrs. James Yarrington,[25] the owner of the boarding house in which Poe, Virginia, and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm were staying.[26] Yarrington helped Maria Clemm bake the wedding cake and prepared a wedding meal.[27] The couple then had a short honeymoon in Petersburg, Virginia.[25]

Debate has raged regarding how unusual this pairing was based on the couple's age and blood relationship. Noted Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn argues it was not particularly unusual, nor was Poe's nicknaming his wife "Sissy" or "Sis."[28] Another Poe biographer, Kenneth Silverman, contends that though their first-cousin marriage was not unusual, her young age was.[22] It has been suggested that Clemm and Poe had a relationship more like that between brother and sister than between husband and wife.[29] Some scholars, including Marie Bonaparte, have read many of Poe's works as autobiographical and have concluded that Virginia died a virgin[30] because she and her husband never consummated their marriage.[31] This interpretation often assumes that Virginia is represented by the title character in the poem "Annabel Lee": a "maiden... by the name of Annabel Lee."[30] Poe biographer Joseph Wood Krutch suggests that Poe did not need women "in the way that normal men need them," but only as a source of inspiration and care,[32] and that Poe was never interested in women sexually.[33] Friends of Poe suggested that the couple did not share a bed for at least the first two years of their marriage but that, from the time she turned 16, they had a "normal" married life until the onset of her illness.[34]

Virginia and Poe were by all accounts a happy and devoted couple. Poe's one-time employer George Rex Graham wrote of their relationship: "His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty."[35] Poe once wrote to a friend, "I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife."[36] She, in turn, by many contemporary accounts, nearly idolized her husband.[37] She often sat close to him while he wrote, kept his pens in order, and folded and addressed his manuscripts.[38] She showed her love for Poe in an acrostic poem she composed when she was 23, dated February 14, 1846:

Ever with thee I wish to roam —

Dearest my life is thine.

Give me a cottage for my home

And a rich old cypress vine,

Removed from the world with its sin and care

And the tattling of many tongues.

Love alone shall guide us when we are there —

Love shall heal my weakened lungs;

And Oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend,

Never wishing that others may see!

Perfect ease we'll enjoy, without thinking to lend

Ourselves to the world and its glee —

Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.[39]

Osgood/Ellet scandal

The "tattling of many tongues" in Virginia's Valentine poem was a reference to actual incidents.[40] In 1845, Poe had begun a flirtation with Frances Sargent Osgood, a married 34-year-old poet.[41] Virginia was aware of the friendship and might even have encouraged it.[42] She often invited Osgood to visit them at home, believing that the older woman had a "restraining" effect on Poe, who had made a promise to "give up the use of stimulants" and was never drunk in Osgood's presence.[43]

At the same time, another poet, Elizabeth F. Ellet, became enamored of Poe and jealous of Osgood.[42] Though, in a letter to Sarah Helen Whitman, Poe called her love for him "loathsome" and wrote that he "could do nothing but repel [it] with scorn," he printed many of her poems to him in the Broadway Journal while he was its editor.[44] Ellet was known for being meddlesome and vindictive[45] and, while visiting the Poe household in late January 1846, she saw one of Osgood's personal letters to Poe.[46] According to Ellet, Virginia pointed out "fearful paragraphs" in Osgood's letter.[47] Ellet contacted Osgood and suggested she should beware of her indiscretions and asked Poe to return her letters,[46] motivated either by jealousy or by a desire to cause scandal.[47] Osgood then sent Margaret Fuller and Anne Lynch Botta to ask Poe on her behalf to return the letters. Angered by their interference, Poe called them "Busy-bodies" and said that Ellet had better "look after her own letters," suggesting indiscretion on her part.[48] He then gathered up these letters from Ellet and left them at her house.[46]

Though these letters had already been returned to her, Ellet asked her brother "to demand of me the letters."[48] Her brother, Colonel William Lummis, did not believe that Poe had already returned them and threatened to kill him. In order to defend himself, Poe requested a pistol from Thomas Dunn English.[46] English, Poe's friend and a minor writer who was also a trained doctor and lawyer, likewise did not believe that Poe had already returned the letters and even questioned their existence.[48] The easiest way out of the predicament, he said, "was a retraction of unfounded charges."[49] Angered at being called a liar, Poe pushed English into a fistfight. Poe later claimed he was triumphant in the fight, though English claimed otherwise, and Poe's face was badly cut by one of English's rings.[46] In Poe's version, he said, "I gave E. a flogging which he will remember to the day of his death." Either way, the fight further sparked gossip over the Osgood affair.[50]

Osgood's husband stepped in and threatened to sue Ellet unless she formally apologized for her insinuations. She retracted her statements in a letter to Osgood saying, "The letter shown me by Mrs Poe must have been a forgery" created by Poe himself.[51] She put all the blame on Poe, suggesting the incident was because Poe was "intemperate and subject to acts of lunacy."[52] Ellet spread the rumor of Poe's insanity, which was taken up by other enemies of Poe and reported in newspapers. The St. Louis Reveille reported: "A rumor is in circulation in New York, to the effect that Mr. Edgar A. Poe, the poet and author, has been deranged, and his friends are about to place him under the charge of Dr. Brigham of the Insane Retreat at Utica."[53] The scandal eventually died down only when Osgood reunited with her husband.[52] Virginia, however, had been very affected by the whole affair. She had received anonymous letters about her husband's alleged indiscretions as early as July 1845. It is presumed that Ellet was involved with these letters, and they so disturbed Virginia that she allegedly declared on her deathbed that "Mrs. E. had been her murderer."[54]

Illness

By this time, Virginia had developed tuberculosis, first seen sometime in the middle of January 1842. While singing and playing the piano, Virginia began to bleed from the mouth, though Poe said she merely "ruptured a blood-vessel."[55] Her health declined and she became an invalid, which drove Poe into a deep depression, especially as she occasionally showed signs of improvement. In a letter to friend John Ingram, Poe described his resulting mental state: "Each time I felt all the agonies of her death—and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly & clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive—nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."[56]

Virginia's condition might have been what prompted the Poe family to move, in the hopes of finding a healthier environment for her. They moved several times within Philadelphia in the early 1840s and their last home in that city is now preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Spring Garden.[57] In this home, Virginia was well enough to tend the flower garden[58] and entertain visitors by playing the harp or the piano and singing.[59] The family then moved to New York sometime in early April 1844, traveling by train and steamboat. Virginia waited on board the ship while her husband secured space at a boarding house on Greenwich Street.[60] By early 1846, family friend Elizabeth Oakes Smith said that Virginia admitted, "I know I shall die soon; I know I can't get well; but I want to be as happy as possible, and make Edgar happy."[61] She promised her husband that after her death she would be his guardian angel.[62]

Move to Fordham

Virginia Poe endured the latter part of her illness at the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, New York. Her bedroom is preserved there. In May 1846, the family (Poe, Virginia, and her mother, Maria) moved to a small cottage in Fordham, about fourteen miles outside the city,[63] a home which is still standing today. In what is the only surviving letter from Poe to Virginia, dated June 12, 1846, he urged her to remain optimistic: "Keep up your heart in all hopelessness, and trust yet a little longer." Of his recent loss of the Broadway Journal, the only magazine Poe ever owned, he said, "I should have lost my courage but for you—my darling little wife you are my greatest and only stimulus now to battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory and ungrateful life."[64] But by November of that year, Virginia's condition was hopeless.[15] Her symptoms included irregular appetite, flushed cheeks, unstable pulse, night sweats, high fever, sudden chills, shortness of breath, chest pains, coughing and spitting up blood.[64]

Nathaniel Parker Willis, a friend of Poe's and an influential editor, published an announcement on December 30, 1846, requesting help for the family, though his facts were not entirely correct:[65]

Illness of Edgar A. Poe. —We regret to learn that this gentleman and his wife are both dangerously ill with the consumption, and that the hand of misfortune lies heavily on their temporal affairs. We are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain the necessaries of life. That is, indeed, a hard lot, and we do hope that the friends and admirers of Mr. Poe will come promptly to his assistance in his bitterest hour of need.[66]

Willis, who had not corresponded with Poe for two years and had since lost his own wife, was one of his greatest supporters in this period. He sent Poe and his wife an inspirational Christmas book, The Marriage Ring; or How to Make a Home Happy.[66]

The announcement was similar to one made for Poe's mother, Eliza Poe, during her last stages of tuberculosis.[65] Other newspapers picked up on the story: "Great God!", said one, "is it possible, that the literary people of the Union, will let poor Poe perish by starvation and lean faced beggary in New York? For so we are led to believe, from frequent notices in the papers, stating that Poe and his wife are both down upon a bed of misery, death, and disease, with not a ducat in the world."[66] The Saturday Evening Post asserted that Virginia was in a hopeless condition and that Poe was bereft: "It is said that Edgar A. Poe is lying dangerously with brain fever, and that his wife is in the last stages of consumption—they are without money and without friends."[64] Even editor Hiram Fuller, whom Poe had previously sued for libel, attempted in the New York Mirror to garner support for Poe and his wife: "We, whom he has quarrelled with, will take the lead," he wrote.[66]

Virginia was described as having dark hair and violet eyes, with skin so pale it was called "pure white,"[67] causing a "bad complexion that spoiled her looks."[2] One visitor to the Poe family noted that "the rose-tint upon her cheek was too bright," possibly a symptom of her illness.[68] Another visitor in Fordham wrote, "Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look."[69] That unearthly look was mentioned by others who suggested it made her look not quite human.[70] William Gowans, who once lodged with the family, described Virginia as a woman of "matchless beauty and loveliness, her eye could match that of any houri, and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate."[71] She might have been a little plump.[70] Many contemporary accounts as well as modern biographers remark on her child-like appearance even in the last years of her life.[9][70][72]

While dying, Virginia asked her mother: "Darling... will you console and take care of my poor Eddy—you will never never leave him?"[73] Her mother stayed with Poe until his own death in 1849. As Virginia was dying, the family received many visitors, including an old friend named Mary Starr. At one point Virginia put Starr's hand in Poe's and asked her to "be a friend to Eddy, and don't forsake him".[74] Virginia was tended to by 25-year old Marie Louise Shew. Shew, who served as a nurse, knew medical care from her father and her husband, both doctors.[75] She provided Virginia with a comforter as her only other cover was Poe's old military cloak, as well as bottles of wine, which the invalid drank "smiling, even when difficult to get it down."[74] Virginia also showed Poe a letter from Louisa Patterson, second wife of Poe's foster-father John Allan, which she had kept for years[76] and which suggested that Patterson had purposely caused the break between Allan and Poe.[74]

Death

On January 29, 1847, Poe wrote to Marie Louise Shew: "My poor Virginia still lives, although failing fast and now suffering much pain."[72] Virginia died the following day, January 30,[77] after five years of illness. Shew helped in organizing her funeral, even purchasing the coffin.[78] Death notices appeared in several newspapers. On February 1, The New York Daily Tribune and the Herald carried the simple obituary: "On Saturday, the 30th ult., of pulmonary consumption, in the 25th year of her age, VIRGINIA ELIZA, wife of EDGAR A. POE."[74] The funeral was February 2, 1847.[72] Attendees included Nathaniel Parker Willis, Ann S. Stephens, and publisher George Pope Morris. Poe refused to look at his dead wife's face, saying he preferred to remember her living.[79] Though now buried at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, Virginia was originally buried in a vault owned by the Valentine family, from whom the Poes rented their Fordham cottage.[78]

Only one image of Virginia is known to exist, for which the painter had to take her corpse as model.[9] A few hours after her death, Poe realized he had no image of Virginia and so commissioned a portrait in watercolor.[72] She is shown wearing "beautiful linen" that Shew said she had dressed her in;[79] Shew might have been the portrait's artist, though this is uncertain.[78] The image depicts her with a slight double chin and with hazel eyes.[72] The image was passed down to the family of Virginia's half-sister Josephine, wife of Neilson Poe.[79]

In 1875, the same year in which her husband's body was reburied, the cemetery in which she lay was destroyed and her remains were almost forgotten. An early Poe biographer, William Gill, gathered the bones and stored them in a box he hid under his bed.[80] Gill's story was reported in the Boston Herald twenty-seven years after the event: he says that he had visited the Fordham cemetery in 1883 at exactly the moment that the sexton Dennis Valentine held Virginia's bones in his shovel, ready to throw them away as unclaimed. Poe himself had died in 1849, and so Gill took Virginia's remains and, after corresponding with Neilson Poe and John Prentiss Poe in Baltimore, arranged to bring the box down to be laid on Poe's left side in a small bronze casket.[81] Virginia's remains were finally buried with her husband's on January 19, 1885[82]—the seventy-sixth anniversary of her husband's birth and nearly ten years after his current monument was erected. The same man who served as sexton during Poe's original burial and his exhumations and reburials was also present at the rites which brought his body to rest with Virginia and Virginia's mother Maria Clemm.[81]

Effect and influence on Poe

Virginia's death had a significant effect on Poe. After her death, Poe was deeply saddened for several months. A friend said of him, "the loss of his wife was a sad blow to him. He did not seem to care, after she was gone, whether he lived an hour, a day, a week or a year; she was his all."[83] A year after her death, he wrote to a friend that he had experienced the greatest evil a man can suffer when, he said, "a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before," had fallen ill.[34] While Virginia was still struggling to recover, Poe turned to alcohol after abstaining for quite some time. How often and how much he drank is a controversial issue, debated in Poe's lifetime and also by modern biographers.[57] Poe referred to his emotional response to his wife's sickness as his own illness, and that he found the cure to it "in the death of my wife. This I can & do endure as becomes a man—it was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope & despair which I could not longer have endured without the total loss of reason."[84]

Poe regularly visited Virginia's grave. As his friend Charles Chauncey Burr wrote, "Many times, after the death of his beloved wife, was he found at the dead hour of a winter night, sitting beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow."[85] Shortly after Virginia's death, Poe courted several other women, including Nancy Richmond of Lowell, Massachusetts, Sarah Helen Whitman of Providence, Rhode Island, and childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster in Richmond. Even so, Frances Sargent Osgood, whom Poe also attempted to woo, believed "that [Virginia] was the only woman whom he ever loved."[86]

References in literature

Many of Poe's works are interpreted autobiographically, with much of his work believed to reflect Virginia's long struggle with tuberculosis and her eventual death. The most discussed example is "Annabel Lee." This poem, which depicts a dead young bride and her mourning lover, is often assumed to have been inspired by Virginia, though other women in Poe's life are potential candidates including Frances Sargent Osgood[87] and Sarah Helen Whitman.[88] A similar poem, "Ulalume," is also believed to be a memorial tribute to Virginia,[89] as is "Lenore," whose title character is described as "the most lovely dead that ever died so young!"[90] After Poe's death, George Gilfillan of the London-based Critic said Poe was responsible for his wife's death, "hurrying her to a premature grave, that he might write 'Annabel Lee' and 'The Raven.'.[91]

Virginia is also seen in Poe's prose. The short story "Eleonora" (1842)—which features a narrator preparing to marry his cousin, with whom he lives alongside her mother—may also refer to Virginia's illness. When Poe wrote it, his wife had just begun to show signs of her illness.[92] It was shortly thereafter that the couple moved to New York City by boat and Poe published "The Oblong Box" (1844). This story, which shows a man mourning his young wife while transporting her corpse by boat, seems to suggest Poe's feelings about Virginia's impending death. As the ship sinks, the husband would rather die than be separated from his wife's corpse.[93] The short story "Ligeia," whose title character suffers a slow and lingering death, may also be inspired by Virginia.[94] After his wife's death, Poe edited his first published story, "Metzengerstein," to remove the narrator's line, "I would wish all I love to perish of that gentle disease," a reference to tuberculosis.[72] Poe's supposed insanity during his wife's illness may also be reflected in his first-person narratives "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," and "The Cask of Amontillado."[34]

Notes

1.^ Thomas, Dwight & David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 52. ISBN 0-7838-1401-1
2.^ Silverman, 82
3.^ Quinn,17
4.^ Silverman 81
5.^ Quinn, 726
6.^ Meyers, 59
7.^ Meyers, 60
8.^ Quinn, 256
9.^ Sova, 52
10.^ Haas, Irvin. Historic Homes of American Authors. Washington, DC: The Preservation Press, 1991. ISBN 0891331808. p. 78
11.^ Quinn, 187–188
12.^ Silverman, 96
13.^ Sova, 67
14.^ Quinn, 218
15.^ Silverman, 323
16.^ Sova, 225
17.^ Quinn, 219
18.^ Silverman, 104
19.^ Meyers, 72
20.^ Silverman, 105
21.^ Meyers, 74
22.^ Silverman, 107
23.^ Meyers, 85
24.^ Quinn, 252
25.^ Quinn, 254
26.^ Quinn, 230
27.^ Sova, 263
28.^ Hoffman, 26
29.^ Krutch, 52
30.^ Hoffman, 27
31.^ Richard, Claude and Jean-Marie Bonnet, "Raising the Wind; or, French Editions of the Works of Edgar Allan Poe," Poe Newsletter, vol. I, No. 1, April 1968, p. 12.
32.^ Krutch, 54
33.^ Krutch, 25
34.^ Sova, 53
35.^ Oberholtzer, 299
36.^ Phillips, 1184
37.^ Hoffman, 318
38.^ Phillips, 1183
39.^ Quinn, 497
40.^ Moss, 214
41.^ Silverman, 280
42.^ Meyers, 190
43.^ Silverman, 287
44.^ Moss, 212
45.^ Silverman, 288
46.^ Meyers, 191
47.^ Moss, 213
48.^ Silverman, 290
49.^ Moss, 220
50.^ Silverman, 291
51.^ Moss, 215
52.^ Silverman, 292
53.^ Meyers, 192
54.^ Moss, 213–214
55.^ Silverman, 179
56.^ Meyers, 208
57.^ Silverman, 183
58.^ Quinn, 385
59.^ Oberholtzer, 287
60.^ Silverman, 219–220
61.^ Phillips, 1098
62.^ Silverman, 301
63.^ Meyers, 322
64.^ Meyers, 203
65.^ Meyers, 202
66.^ Silverman, 324
67.^ Krutch, 55–56
68.^ Silverman, 182
69.^ Meyers, 204
70.^ Krutch, 56
71.^ Meyers, 92–93
72.^ Meyers, 206
73.^ Silverman, 420
74.^ Silverman, 326
75.^ Sova, 218
76.^ Quinn, 527
77.^ Krutch, 169
78.^ Silverman, 327
79.^ Phillips, 1203
80.^ Meyers, 263
81.^ Miller, John C. "The Exhumations and Reburials of Edgar and Virginia Poe and Mrs. Clemm," from Poe Studies, vol. VII, no. 2, December 1974, p. 47
82.^ Phillips, 1205
83.^ Meyers, 207
84.^ Moss, 233
85.^ Phillips, 1206
86.^ Krutch, 57
87.^ Meyers, 244
88.^ Sova, 12
89.^ Meyers, 211
90.^ Silverman, 202
91.^ Campbell, Killis. "The Poe-Griswold Controversy," The Mind of Poe and Other Studies. New York: Russell &; Russell, Inc., 1962: 79.
92.^ Sova, 78
93.^ Silverman, 228–229
94.^ Hoffman, 255–256

References

Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0807123218.
Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.
Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0684193701.
Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson. The Literary History of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1906. ISBN 1932109455.
Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Chicago: The John C. Winston Company, 1926.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0801857309
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0060923318.

Mary Cecilia Rogers Found Floating in the Hudson 1841

Mary Cecilia Rogers, also known as the "Beautiful Cigar Girl," was a 19th-century murder victim whose story became a national sensation and was fictionalized most notably by Edgar Allan Poe as "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842).

Background

Mary Rogers was probably born in 1820 in Lyme, Connecticut, though her birth records have not survived.[1] Her father died in a steamboat explosion when she was 17 and she took a job as a clerk in a tobacco shop owned by John Anderson in New York City.[2] Anderson paid her a generous wage in part because her physical attractiveness brought in many customers. One customer wrote that he spent an entire afternoon at the store only to exchange "teasing glances" with her. Another admirer published a poem in the New York Herald referring to her heaven-like smile and her star-like eyes.[3] Some of her customers included notable literary figures James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Fitz-Greene Halleck.[4]

First disappearance

On October 5, 1838, the New York Sun reported that "Miss Mary Cecilia Rogers" had disappeared from her home.[2] Her mother Phoebe said she found a suicide note which the local coroner analyzed and said revealed a "fixed and unalterable determination to destroy herself".[5] The next day, however, the Times and Commercial Intelligence reported that the disappearance was a hoax and that Rogers only went to visit a friend in Brooklyn.[2] The Sun had previously run a story known as the Great Moon Hoax in 1835, causing a stir.[6] Some suggested this return was actually the hoax, evidenced by Rogers's failure to return to work immediately. When she finally resumed working at the tobacco shop, one newspaper suggested the whole event was a publicity stunt overseen by Anderson.[7]

Murder

On July 25, 1841, Rogers told her fiancé Daniel Payne that she would be visiting her aunt and other family members.[8] Three days later, on July 28, police found her body floating in the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey.[9] Referred to as the "Beautiful Cigar Girl", the mystery of her death was sensationalized in newspapers and received national attention. The details surrounding the case suggested she was murdered. Months later, the inquest still ongoing, her fiancé was found dead, an act of suicide. By his side, a remorseful note and an empty bottle of poison were found.

The story, heavily covered by the press, also emphasized the ineptitude and corruption in the city's watchmen system of law enforcement.[10] At the time, New York City's population of 320,000 was served by an archaic force, consisting of one night watch, one hundred city marshals, thirty-one constables, and fifty-one police officers.[11]

The popular theory was that Rogers was a victim of gang violence.[12] In November 1842, Frederica Loss came forward and swore that Rogers's death was the result of a failed abortion attempt. Police refused to believe her story and the case remained unsolved.[8] Interest in the story waned nine weeks later when the press picked up on a different murder.[13]

In fiction

Rogers' story was fictionalized most notably by Edgar Allan Poe as "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842). The action of the story was relocated to Paris and the victim's body found in the Seine.[12] Poe presented the story as a sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), commonly considered the first modern detective story, and included its main character C. Auguste Dupin. As Poe wrote in a letter: "under the pretense of showing how Dupin... unravelled the mystery of Marie's assassination, I, in fact, enter into a very rigorous analysis of the real tragedy in New York."[14] In the story, Dupin suggests several possible solutions but never actually names the murderer.[15]

References

1.^ Stashower, Daniel (2006). The Beautiful Cigar Girl. New York: PenguinBooks. pp. 20. ISBN 052594981X.
2.^ Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z (Paperback ed. ed.). New York: Checkmark Books. pp. 212. ISBN 081604161X.
3.^ Stashower, Daniel (2006). The Beautiful Cigar Girl. New York: PenguinBooks. pp. 22. ISBN 052594981X.
4.^ McNamara, Joseph. The Justice Story: True Tales of Murder, Mystery, Mayhem. Sports Publishing LLC, 2000: 99. ISBN 1582612854
5.^ Stashower, Daniel (2006). The Beautiful Cigar Girl. New York: PenguinBooks. pp. 22–23. ISBN 052594981X.
6.^ Maliszewski, Paul. "Paper Moon", Wilson Quarterly. Winter 2005. p. 26
7.^ Stashower, Daniel (2006). The Beautiful Cigar Girl. New York: PenguinBooks. pp. 23. ISBN 052594981X.
8.^ Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z (Paperback ed. ed.). New York: Checkmark Books. pp. 213. ISBN 081604161X.
9.^ Thomas, Dwight & David K. Jackson (1987). The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849. New York: G. K. Hall & Co. pp. 336–337. ISBN 0783814011.
10.^ Lardner, James, and Thomas Reppetto (2000). NYPD: A City and Its Police. Owl Books. pp. 18–21.
11.^ Lankevich, George L. (1998). American Metropolis: A History of New York City. NYU Press. pp. 84–85. ISBN 0814751865.
12.^ Silverman, Kenneth (1991). Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance (Paperback ed. ed.). New York: Harper Perennial. pp. 205. ISBN 0060923318.
13.^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 183. ISBN 086576008X
14.^ Rosenheim, Shawn James (1997). The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 68–69. ISBN 9780801853326.
15.^ Meyers, Jeffrey (1992). Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy (Paperback ed. ed.). New York: Cooper Square Press. pp. 135. ISBN 0815410387.

Deathday: Poe "Busy-body," Feminist & Journalist Margaret Fuller 1850

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850) was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Born Sarah Margaret Fuller in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was given a substantial early education by her father, Timothy Fuller. She later had more formal schooling and became a teacher before, in 1839, she began overseeing what she called "conversations": discussions among women meant to compensate for their lack of access to higher education. She became the first editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial in 1840, before joining the staff of the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley in 1844. By the time she was in her 30s, Fuller had earned a reputation as the best-read person in New England, male or female, and became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College. Her seminal work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1845. A year later, she was sent to Europe for the Tribune as its first female correspondent. She soon became involved with the revolution in Italy and allied herself with Giuseppe Mazzini. She had a relationship with Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she had a child. All three members of the family died in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York, as they were traveling to the United States in 1850. Fuller's body was never recovered.

Fuller was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment. She also encouraged many other reforms in society, including prison reform and the emancipation of slaves in the United States. Many other advocates for women's rights and feminism, including Susan B. Anthony, cite Fuller as a source of inspiration. Many of her contemporaries, however, were not supportive, including her former friend Harriet Martineau. She said that Fuller was a talker rather than an activist. Shortly after Fuller's death, her importance faded; the editors who prepared her letters to be published, believing her fame would be short-lived, were not concerned about accuracy and censored or altered much of her work before publication.

One of Fuller's most important works, "The Great Lawsuit", was written in serial form for The Dial. She originally intended to name the work The Great Lawsuit: Man 'versus' Men, Woman 'versus' Women; when it was expanded and published independently in 1845, it was instead named Woman in the Nineteenth Century. After completing it, she wrote to a friend: "I had put a good deal of my true self in it, as if, I suppose I went away now, the measure of my footprint would be left on earth." The work discussed the role that women played in the American democracy and Fuller's opinion on possibilities for improvement. It has since become one of the major documents in American feminism. It is considered the first of its kind in the United States.

Fuller was also involved in a scandal involving fellow literary critic Edgar Allan Poe, who had been carrying on public flirtation with the married poet Frances Sargent Osgood. At the same time, another poet, Elizabeth F. Ellet, became enamored of Poe and jealous of Osgood and suggested the relationship between Poe and Osgood was more than just innocent flirtation. Osgood then sent Fuller and Anne Lynch Botta to Poe's cottage on her behalf to request that he return the personal letters she had sent him. Angered by their interference, Poe called them "Busy-bodies." A public scandal erupted and continued until Osgood's estranged husband Samuel Stillman Osgood stepped in and threatened to sue Ellet.

Despite his personal issues with Fuller, the typically harsh literary critic Edgar Allan Poe wrote of Woman in the Nineteenth Century as "a book which few women in the country could have written, and no woman in the country would have published, with the exception of Miss Fuller," noting its "independence" and "unmitigated radicalism."


Death

In the beginning of 1850, Fuller wrote to a friend: "It has long seemed that in the year 1850 I should stand on some important plateau in the ascent of life ... I feel however no marked and important change as yet." Also that year, Fuller wrote: "I am absurdly fearful and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling ... It seems to me that my future upon earth will soon close ... I have a vague expectation of some crisis—I know not what." A few days after writing this, Fuller, Ossoli, and their child began a five-week return voyage to the United States aboard the ship Elizabeth. The ship was an American merchant freighter carrying cargo that included mostly marble from Carrara as well as a statue of John C. Calhoun sculpted by Hiram Powers. After a short delay due to rain, the Elizabeth set sail on May 17. At sea, the ship's captain, Seth Hasty, died of smallpox. The child, Angelino, contracted the disease as well, though he recovered.

Possibly because of the inexperienced first mate, now serving as captain, the ship slammed into a sandbar less than 100 yards from Fire Island, New York, on July 19, 1850, around 3:30 a.m. Many of the other passengers and crew members abandoned ship. The first mate, Mr. Bangs, urged Fuller and Ossoli to try to save themselves and their child as he himself jumped overboard, later claiming he believed Fuller had wanted to be left behind to die. On the beach, people arrived with carts hoping to take advantage if any cargo washed to shore; none made any effort to rescue the crew or passengers of the Elizabeth, though they were only 50 yards from shore. Ossoli and Fuller, along with their child, were some of the last on the ship; most others had attempted to swim to shore. Eventually, Ossoli was thrown overboard by a massive wave and, after the wave had passed, a crewman who witnessed the event said Fuller could not be seen.

Henry David Thoreau traveled to New York, at the urging of Emerson, to search the shore but neither Fuller's body nor that of her husband was ever recovered; only Angelino had washed ashore. Few of their possessions were found other than some of the child's clothes and a few letters. Fuller's manuscript on the history of the Roman Republic was also lost. A memorial to Fuller was erected on the beach at Fire Island in 1901 through the efforts of Julia Ward Howe. A cenotaph to Fuller and Ossoli, under which Angelino is buried, is in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The inscription reads, in part:

By birth a child of New England
By adoption a citizen of Rome
By genius belonging to the world

Within a week after her death, Horace Greeley suggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called Margaret and Her Friends, be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed away." Many of her writings were soon collected together by her brother Arthur as At Home and Abroad (1856) and Life Without and Life Within (1858). He also edited a new version of Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1855. In February 1852, The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli was published, edited by Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing, though much of the work was censored or reworded. It particularly left out details about her love affair with Ossoli and an earlier relationship with a man named James Nathan. The three editors, believing the public interest in Fuller would be short-lived and that she would not survive as a historical figure, were not concerned about accuracy. Even so, for a time, it was the best-selling biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before the end of the century. The book focused on her personality rather than her work and, as a result, detractors of the book ignored her status as a critic and instead criticized her personal life and her "unwomanly" arrogance.

Deathday: Poe Friend & Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1861

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806 – June 29, 1861) was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.

At age 20 Elizabeth began to battle with a lifelong illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose. She began to take morphine for the pain and eventually became addicted to the drug. This illness caused her to be frail and weak. Her illness meant that Browning composed her poems primarily in her home.

Meeting Robert Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 1844 Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the land at the time and inspired Robert Browning to write to her, telling her how much he loved her poems. Kenyon arranged for Robert Browning to meet Elizabeth in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Elizabeth had produced a large amount of work and had been writing long before Robert Browning had ever published a word. However, he had a great influence on her writing, as did she on his; it is observable that Elizabeth’s poetry matured after meeting Robert. Two of Barrett’s most famous pieces were produced after she met Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh.

Some critics, however, point to him as an undermining influence: "Until her relationship with Robert Browning began in 1845, Barrett’s willingness to engage in public discourse about social issues and about aesthetic issues in poetry, which had been so strong in her youth, gradually diminished, as did her physical health. As an intellectual presence and a physical being, she was becoming a shadow of herself."

Among Elizabeth's best known lyrics are Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)— the "Portuguese" being her husband's pet name for her. The title also refers to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luís de Camões; in all these poems she used rhyme schemes typical of the Portuguese sonnets. The verse-novel Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a woman writer making her way in life, balancing work and love. The writings depicted in this novel are all based on similar, personal experiences that Elizabeth suffered through herself. The North American Review praised Elizabeth’s poem in these words: “ Mrs. Browning’s poems are, in all respects, the utterance of a woman—of a woman of great learning, rich experience, and powerful genius, uniting to her woman’s nature the strength which is sometimes thought peculiar to a man.”

Courtship and marriage to Robert Browning

The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were carried out secretly. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Browning really loved her as much as he professed to, and her doubts are expressed in the Sonnets from the Portuguese, which she wrote over the next two years. Love conquered all, however, and after a private marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church, Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in August 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth's loyal nurse, Wilson, who witnessed the marriage at the church, accompanied the couple to Italy.

Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of his children who married. As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was harmonious. The Brownings were well respected in Italy, and even famous, for they would be asked for autographs or stopped by people because of their celebrity. Elizabeth grew stronger and in 1849, at the age of 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their son later married but had no legitimate children, so there are apparently no direct descendants of the two famous poets.

“Several Browning critics have suggested that the poet decided that he was an "objective poet" and then sought out a “subjective poet” in the hope that dialogue with her would enable him to be more successful.”

At her husband's insistence, the second edition of Elizabeth’s Poems included her love sonnets; as a result, her popularity shot up (as well as her critical regard), and her position as Victorian poetess du jour was cemented. In 1850, upon the occasion of the death of William Wordsworth, she was thought to be a serious contender for Poet Laureate, but the position went to Tennyson.

Decline

At the death of an old friend, G.B. Hunter, and then of her father, her health faded again, centering around deteriorating lung function. She was moved from Florence to Siena, residing at the Villa Alberti. In 1860 she issued a small volume of political poems titled Poems before Congress. These poems related to political issues for the Italians, “most of which were written to express her sympathy with the Italian cause after the outbreak of fighting in 1859.” She dedicated this book to her husband. Her last work was A Musical Instrument, published posthumously.

In 1860 they returned to Rome, only to find that Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta had died, news which made Elizabeth weak and depressed. She became gradually weaker and died on 29 June 1861. She was buried in the English Cemetery of Florence. “On Monday July 1 the shops in the section of the city around Casa Guidi were closed, while Elizabeth was mourned with unusual demonstrations.” The nature of her illness is still unclear, although medical and literary scholars have speculated that longstanding pulmonary problems, combined with palliative opiates, contributed to her decline.

Critical reception

American poet Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by Barrett Browning's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship and specifically borrowed the poem's meter for his poem The Raven. Poe had reviewed Barrett's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal and said that "her poetic inspiration is the highest—we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself." In return, she praised The Raven and Poe dedicated his 1845 collection The Raven and Other Poems to her, referring to her as "the noblest of her sex."

Deathday: Poe Enemy, Historian & Poet Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet 1877

Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet (October 18, 1818 – June 3, 1877) was an American writer, historian and poet. She was the first writer to record the lives of women who contributed to the American Revolutionary War.[1]

Born Elizabeth Fries Lummis, in New York, she published her first book, Poems, Translated and Original, in 1835. She married the chemist William Henry Ellet and the couple moved to South Carolina. She had published several books and contributed to multiple journals. In 1845 she moved back to New York and took her place in the literary scene there. She was involved with a public scandal involving Edgar Allan Poe and Frances Sargent Osgood and, later, another involving Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Ellet's most important work, The Women of the American Revolution, was published in 1845. The three volume book profiled the lives of patriotic women in the early history of the United States. She continued writing until her death in 1877.

Early life

Elizabeth Fries Lummis was born in Sodus Point, New York, on October 18, 1818. Her mother was Sarah Maxwell (1780–1849)[2][3] the daughter of American Revolutionary War captain John Maxwell. During the Revolution, John Maxwell was lieutenant of the first company raised in Sussex County, New Jersey, he was promoted to captain, and attached to the Second Regiment Hunterdon County Militia.[4] He was also a captain in Colonel Spencer's regiment of the Continental Army, from February 7, 1777, to April 11, 1778. He later joined the Army of General George Washington as captain of a company of 100 volunteers known as "Maxwell's Company.[5]

Her father was William Nixon Lummis (1775–1833), a prominent doctor who studied medicine in Philadelphia under the famous physician Dr. Benjamin Rush.[5] In the early part of 1800, Dr. Lummis left Philadelphia and purchased the Pulteney estate in Sodus Point, Wayne County, New York.[6] Elizabeth Lummis attended Aurora Female Seminary in Aurora, New York, where she studied, among other subjects, French, German, and Italian. Her first published work, at age 16, was a translation of Silvio Pellico's Euphemio of Messina.[7]

Career

In 1835, Elizabeth Lummis published her first book, entitled Poems, Translated and Original, which included her tragedy, Teresa Contarini, based on the history of Venice, which was successfully performed in New York and other cities. Around this time she married William Henry Ellet (1806–1859), a chemist from New York City.[8] He graduated from Columbia College in New York and earned a gold medal for a dissertation on the compounds of cyanogen. The couple moved to Columbia, South Carolina, when he was made professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at South Carolina College in 1836. He also discovered a new and inexpensive method of preparing guncotton, for which the state of South Carolina presented him with a service of silver plate.[9]

During this time Ellet published several books. In 1839 she wrote The Characters of Schiller, a critical essay on the writer Friedrich Schiller and included her translation of many of his poems.[10] She wrote Scenes in the Life of Joanna of Sicily, a history of the life styles of female nobility, and Rambles about the Country, a lively description of the scenery she had observed in her travels through the United States, in 1840.[11] She continued writing poems, translations, and essays on European literature which she contributed to the American Monthly, the North American Review, the Southern Literary Messenger, the Southern Quarterly Review, and other periodicals. Ellet wrote abundantly in a wide variety of genres.[12]

In 1845, Ellet left her husband in the south and moved back to New York City where she resumed her place as a member of literary society along with such writers as Margaret Fuller, Anne Lynch Botta, Edgar Allan Poe, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Anna Cora Mowatt and Frances Sargent Osgood.

Scandal

During this time Ellet was a participant in a notorious scandal involving Edgar Allan Poe and Frances Sargent Osgood, both of whom were married to others. Accounts as to the particulars of the scandal and the sequence of events differ. At the time, Poe was at the height of his fame, thanks to his work, "The Raven." A number of women active in literary society sent him letters, including Ellet and Osgood. Some of the letters sent may have been flirtatious or amorous ones. Ellet also spent time with Poe discussing literary matters. It is possible that Ellet felt in competition with Osgood for Poe's affections.[1] During this time Poe had written several poems to and about Osgood, including "A Valentine."[13]

On one visit to Poe's home in January 1846,[14] Ellet allegedly observed letters from Osgood, shown to her by Poe's wife Virginia, and subsequently advised Osgood to ask for their return, implying to Osgood that they were an indiscretion.[14] On behalf of Osgood, Margaret Fuller and Anne Lynch Botta asked Poe to return the letters. Poe, angered by their interference, suggested that Ellet had better "look after her own letters."[15] One such letter, written in German, asked Poe to "Call for it at her residence this evening," a phrase presumably meant to be seductive, though Poe ignored it or did not understand it.[16] He then gathered up these letters from Ellet and left them at her house.[14] Despite her letters already having been returned, Ellet asked her brother "to demand of me the letters."[15] Her brother, Colonel William Lummis, did not believe that Poe had already returned them and threatened to kill him. In order to defend himself, Poe requested a pistol from Thomas Dunn English, who did not believe that Ellet ever sent Poe any letters.[14]

Frances Sargent Osgood

Osgood's husband, Samuel Stillman Osgood, threatened to sue Ellet unless she formally apologized. She retracted her statements in a letter to Osgood saying, "The letter shown me by Mrs Poe must have been a forgery created by Poe himself."[17] She put all the blame on Poe, suggesting the incident was because Poe was "intemperate and subject to acts of lunacy."[18] The rumor that Poe was insane was spread by Ellet and by other enemies of Poe and eventually reported in newspapers.[19] After Osgood reunited with her husband, the scandal died down.[18] Poe's sick wife Virginia, however, was deeply affected by the scandal. She had been receiving anonymous letters, possibly from Ellet, which reported her husband's alleged indiscretions as early as July 1845. On her deathbed Virginia claimed that "Mrs. E. had been her murderer."[20] As Poe described years later: "I scorned Mrs. E simply because she revolted me, and to this day she has never ceased her anonymous persecutions."[21] It is believed that Poe wrote the short story "Hop-Frog" as a sort of literary revenge on Ellet.

The Women of the American Revolution

Around 1846, Ellet began a major project in historical writing; to profile the life stories of women who sacrificed and were committed to the American Revolution. She did this by searching out private, unpublished letters and diaries, and by interviewing descendants of Revolutionary era and frontier women. She was the first historian of the Revolution to carry out such an effort.[8] She noted the "abundance of materials for the [masculine] history of action" and attempted to add balance by telling the feminine side, referring to the founding "mothers" as providing "the nurture in the domestic sanctuary of that love of civil liberty which afterwards kindled into a flame and shed light on the world."[22]

She found so much information about so many female patriots that the first edition of The Women of the American Revolution (1848) had to be published in two volumes. These volumes were well received and a third volume of additional material was published in 1850. Later historians consider these volumes her most important work.[11] In addition, Ellet also authored Domestic History of the American Revolution which summarized the same material in narrative form, which was also published in 1850.

Ellet told the stories of women from every colony and from all ranks of society, with the exception of African Americans, whose role she chose to ignore. Some of the women she wrote about, such as Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren and Ann Eliza Bleecker, among others, were famous in their own right. She also wrote of the women who were more obscure but equally valuable, the wives of heroes, who in the face of British encroachment, bravely raised children and defended their homes.[23] She wrote: "It is almost impossible now to appreciate the vast influence of woman's patriotism upon the destinies of the infant republic."[23]

Anthologist and critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold had aided Ellet in the production of the book and granted her access to the records of the New York Historical Society, of which he was a member. She did not acknowledge his assistance, angering the vindictive Griswold.[24] In a review Griswold said, "with the assistance of a few gentlemen more familiar than herself with our public and domestic experience, she has made a valuable and interesting work."[25]

Further work

Now an established and respected author, Ellet went on to write Family Pictures from the Bible in 1849. In 1850, she wrote Evenings at Woodlawn, a collection of German legends and traditions and Domestic History of the American Revolution, possibly the only history of the American Revolution told from the perspective of both men and women. From 1851 to 1857 she wrote Watching Spirits, Pioneer Women of the West, Novelettes of the Musicians and Summer Rambles in the West. This book was inspired by a boating trip along the Minnesota River in 1852. The local town, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, got its name from Ellet and has dedicated a nature trail in her honor.[26]

In 1857, Ellet published a 600-page encyclopedia on American home economics entitled The Practical Housekeeper. The guide, which seemed to target middle to upper class, was well organized into three parts: cooking, housekeeping and pharmaceutical concerns. Its contents included thousands of recipes and advice, with references to philosophers, scientists, and ancient civilizations. There were also 500 wood engraving illustrations. She wrote in the Preface "No complete system of Domestic Economy, within the limits of a convenient manual, has been published in this country."[8]

Later works included Women Artists in All Ages and Countries (1859), the first book of its kind to represent a history of women artists.[27] She wroteThe Queens of American Society (1867), and Court Circles of the Republic (1869), a look at the social life of eighteen presidents from George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant.[25]

Later years

In 1850, Ellet and her husband relocated to New York, where he spent his final years as a chemical consultant for the Manhattan Gas Company.

Ellet became involved with the divorce case between Rufus Griswold and his second wife, Charlotte Myers, in 1852. Ellet and Ann S. Stephens wrote to Myers telling her not to allow the divorce, as well as to Harriet McCrillis, who intended to marry Griswold after the divorce, to end her relationship with him.[28] After it was granted, Ellet and Stephens continued writing to Myers and convinced her to repeal the divorce on September 23, 1853.[29] On February 24, 1856, the appeal went to court, with Ellet and Stephens providing lengthy testimony against Griswold's character. Neither Griswold nor Myers attended and the appeal was dismissed.[30] When Griswold died in 1857, Sarah Anna Lewis, a friend and writer, suggested that Ellet had worsened Griswold's illness and that she "goaded Griswold to his death."[31]

In 1857 Ellet replaced Ann Stephens as literary editor of the New York Evening Express.[32] Ellet's husband died two years later in 1859. She continued to write, and although they had no children, she promoted charities for impoverished women and children by speaking in public to raise funds. An Episcopalian most of her life, she converted to Catholicism in her later years.[8] She died of Bright's disease in New York City on June 3, 1877,[2] and was buried beside her husband at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.[3]

Legacy

Ellet was the first historian to extensively write about the relationship of women to the American Revolution. She felt that women shaped history by their influence, which was done with "sentiment" and "feeling". This was so hard to define that she stated "History can do it no Justice."[33] Her book The Women of the American Revolution is still studied by historians today.

List of works

List of works taken from MSU Historic American project.[8]

Euphemio of Messina (1834) a translation
Poems, Translated and Original including the play Teresa Conarini (1835)
The Characters of Schiller (1839)
Joanna of Sicily (1840)
Rambles about the Country (1840)
The Women of the American Revolution (1848–50) (3 volumes)
Evenings at Woodlawn (1849)
Family Pictures from the Bible (1849)
Domestic History of the American Revolution (1850)
Watching Spirits (1851)
Nouvelettes of the Musicians (1851)
Pioneer Women of the West (1852)
Summer Rambles in the West (1853),
The Practical Housekeeper (1857)
Women Artists in All Ages and Countries (1859)
The Queens of American Society (1867)
Court Circles of the Republic (1869)

References

1.^ "Librarycompany". Elizabeth F. Ellet.
2.^ "Elizabeth Fries Lummis". Rootsweb.
3.^ Diamant, Lincoln (1998). Revolutionary Women in the War for American Independence. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
4.^ "New Jersey State Library". Official Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War by William Stryker.
5.^"Southern New York". MARDOS Memorial Library.
6.^ "New York Times Archives" (PDF). Elizabeth Fries Ellet Obituary. June 4, 1877.
7.^ "Britannica". Elizabeth-Fries-Lummis-Ellet.
8.^ "MSU Library". Historic American Project.
9.^ Drake, Francis Samuel (1872). Dictionary of American Biography. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co.. pp. 301.
10.^ Elfe, Wolfgang; James N. Hardin, Günther Holst (1992). The Fortunes of German Writers in America: Studies in Literary Reception. South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. pp. 22. ISBN 0872497860.
11.^ "Ellet, E. F. (Elizabeth Fries), 1818-1877". Literature Online Biography.
12.^ "For women". Elizabeth F. Lummis Ellet.
13.^ "E.A. Poe Society". Lectures and Articles on Edgar Allan Poe.
14.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York Cooper Square Press, 1992: 191. 15.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 290. ISBN 0060923318.
16.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 291. ISBN 0060923318.
17.^ Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Southern Illinois University Press, 1969: 215
18.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 292. ISBN 0060923318.
19.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York Cooper Square Press, 1992: 192. ISBN 0684193701.
20.^ Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Southern Illinois University Press, 1969: 213–214
21.^ Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Volume II. Chicago: The John C. Winston Co., 1926: 1388
22.^ Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of American Culture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977: 184. ISBN 0-394-40532-3
23.^ "History From America's Most Famous Valleys". The Women of the American Revolution.
24.^ Bayless, Joy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor, Hardcover ed. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943. p. 143–144.
25.^ "Legacy Profile by Carol Mattingly". Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet (1818–1877).
26.^ Jerde, Lyn. "Elizabeth Fries Ellet Interpretive Trail is signed, dedicated", Eden Prairie Sun-Current. August 9, 2007. p. 9A
27.^ Langer, Sandra L.; Ellet, Elizabeth Fries Lummis (1980). "Women Artists in All Ages and Countries by Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet". Woman's Art Journal (Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2) 1 (2): 55–58. 28.^ Bayless, Joy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943: 217–220.
29.^ Bayless, Joy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943: 227.
30.^ Bayless, Joy. Rufus Wilmot Griswold: Poe's Literary Executor. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1943: 251.
31.^ Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Volume II. Chicago: The John C. Winston Co., 1926: 1575
32.^ Meyer, Annie Nathan; Julia Ward Howe (1891). Woman's Work in America. New York: Henry Holt and Company. pp. 128.
33.^ Kerber, Linda (1997). Toward an Intellectual History of Women: Essays. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press. pp. 67–68.