Deathday: Poet & Poe Friend Thomas Holley Chivers1858

Thomas Holley Chivers (October 18, 1809 – December 18, 1858) was an American doctor-turned-poet from the state of Georgia. He is best known for his friendship with Edgar Allan Poe and his controversial defense of the poet after his death.

Born into a wealthy Georgia family, Chivers became interested in poetry at a young age. After he and his first wife separated, he received a medical degree from Transylvania University but focused his energy on publishing rather than medicine. In addition to submitting poems to various magazines and journals, Chivers published several volumes of poetry, including The Lost Pleiad in 1845, as well as plays. Edgar Allan Poe showed an interest in the young poet and encouraged his work. Chivers spent the last few years of his life defending the reputation of Poe, who had died in 1849, though he also thought Poe had been heavily influenced by his own poetry. Chivers died in Georgia in 1858.

As a literary theorist, Chivers believed in divine inspiration. He encouraged the development of a distinctive American style of literature and especially promoted young writers. His poems were known for religious overtones with an emphasis on death and reunions with lost loved ones in the afterlife. Though he built up a mild reputation in his day, he was soon forgotten after his death.

Life and work

Chivers was born on October 18, 1809,[1] at Digby Manor, his father's plantation near Washington, Georgia.[2] At age seven, he was introduced to poetry when he read William Cowper's "The Rose".[3] In 1827, Chivers married his 16-year old cousin Frances Elizabeth Chivers. The two soon separated due to alleged meddling by Frances Chivers Albert, the wife of the poet's uncle, prior to the birth of their daughter in 1828.[4] It has also been suggested their separation was due to abuse, though these rumors originated from the same uncle.[5] After this incident, Chivers compared himself to Lord Byron, whose wife had also left him.[6] Chivers went on to receive a degree in medicine in 1830 from Transylvania University in Kentucky. His thesis was titled "Intermittent and Remittent Fevers".[5]

Chivers wandered throughout the West and North of the United States, publishing poetry in various places before returning to Georgia.[6] In 1832, Chivers published The Path of Sorrow, a collection of poetry based on the events of his troubled first marriage. Two years later, he published Conrad and Eudora; or, The Death of Alonzo, the first fictionalized account of the actual 1825 murder case nicknamed the "Kentucky Tragedy". The work was later renamed Leoni, The Orphan of Venice.[7] On November 21, 1834, Chivers married Harriet Hunt of Springfield, Massachusetts and the couple had four children, though all died young.[8] Chivers and his first wife never legally divorced—one such suit was dismissed in court in 1835—but Georgia law invalidated marriage after a spouse's absence of five years or more.[9] Though Chivers contributed to various newspapers and magazines, his poetry was turned down for publication by the Southern Literary Messenger in March 1835, which suggested he return to medicine and the "lancet and pill-box".[6] Though the poems were not printed, unsigned commentary on them was presented in an editorial, referring to verses submitted by "T. H. C., M. D."[10] The Lost Pleiad was self-published in New York in 1845 to initial success, though sales rapidly declined.[11] In 1837, Chivers self-published Nacoochee; or, the Beautiful Star, With Other Poems. The volume was dedicated to his mother, who died a year later.[12]

Relationship with Edgar Allan Poe

Chivers is best known for his association with Edgar Allan Poe and, in fact, it is through this relationship that Chivers and his work was rediscovered in the 20th century.[13] The first interaction between the two was in 1840 though they did not meet until 1845 in New York.[14] The two became friends and Chivers was willing to give Poe lifetime financial support if he moved to the South.[15] Chivers appreciated Poe's ability and wrote that George Rex Graham was seriously underpaying Poe for his work on Graham's Magazine. "He ought to give you ten thousand dollars a year... It is richly worth it... [Graham] is greatly indebted to you. It is not my opinion that you have ever been, or ever will be, paid for your intellectual labours. You need never expect it, until you establish a Magazine of your own", he wrote, referring to Poe's plans to begin The Stylus.[16] Even so, Chivers was concerned about Poe's reputation as a severe literary critic, cautioning him about "when you tomahawk people".[17] Poe, in fact, had been hoping Chivers would lend his wealth as a financial backer for The Stylus and possibly even serve as a co-editor in its early planning stages.[18] Chivers considered Poe's proposal but was not able to accept because of the death of his three-year-old daughter just over a week later.[19]

Poe had written about Chivers in the second part of his "Autography" series, published in Graham's Magazine in December of 1841. Poe said:

"His productions affect one as a wild dream — strange, incongruous, full of images of more than arabesque monstrosity, and snatches of sweet unsustained song. Even his worst nonsense (and some of it is horrible) has an indefinite charm of sentiment and melody. We can never be sure that there is any meaning in his words — neither is there any meaning in many of our finest musical airs — but the effect is very similar in both. His figures of speech are metaphor run mad, and his grammar is often none at all. Yet there are as fine individual passages to be found in the poems of Dr. Chivers, as in those of any poet whatsoever."[20]

The two had corresponded through letters but finally met in June or July 1845. Chivers visited Poe when Poe was sick and bedridden and when Poe's wife Virginia was in an especially difficult period of her struggle with tuberculosis. Chivers later recalled that Poe's voice was "like the soft tones of an Aeolian Harp when the music that has been sleeping in the strings is awakened by the Breezes of Eden laden with sweet Spices from the mountains of the Lord".[21]

By September 1845, however, Chivers was lecturing Poe on the dangers of alcohol. A Prohibitionist, he said Poe was wasting his God-given talents by indulging in drink. "Why should a Man whom God, by nature, has endowed with such transcendent abilities, so degrade himself into the veriest automaton as to be moved only by the poisonous steam of Hell-fire?" he said. While Poe's wife Virginia was sick, Chivers had to carry Poe home after a night of excess.[17]

Moreover, as attested to in an 1848 pamphlet titled Search After Truth, Chivers disagreed with Poe regarding aesthetics. This small booklet presents a series of dialogues between the Seer [Chivers] and Politian [Poe]. For Chivers, a poet should be a Shelleyan or Swedenborgian visionary intent on capturing mystic realms of experience in language. For Poe, the poet is merely a superior wordsmith. The wise Seer ultimately leads Politan to the truth.[22]

After Poe's death

After Poe's death, Chivers accused Poe of plagiarizing both "The Raven" and "Ulalume" from his own work[23] though other critics suggested Chivers's Eonchs of Ruby were a "mediocre restatement" of Poe's poems.[24] The first poem of the collection, "The Vigil of Aiden", was an homage to Poe, using names like "Lenore" and the refrain "forever more!"[25] On July 30, 1854, Chivers published an essay called "Origin of Poe's Raven" under the pseudonym Fiat Justitia, claiming that he inspired Poe to use trochaic octameter and the word "nevermore" in "The Raven".[26] Chivers also suggested in the Georgia Citizen that Poe learned to write poetry from him. As literary scholar Randy Nelson wrote: "anybody who's read both Poe and Thomas Holley Chivers can see that one of them 'influenced' the other, but just who took what from whom isn't clear."[27]

Even so, Chivers continued to praise and admire Poe (albeit careful to point out Poe's literary debt to him) and was one of the first to present a picture of the "real Poe" in the face of the sustained attacks on Poe's reputation by the Reverend Rufus Wilmot Griswold, the poet's literary executor. This correction took the form of a memoir now titled Chivers' Life of Poe, not published until 1952.[14] Chivers said of Griswold that he "is not only incompetent to Edit any of [Poe's] works, but totally unconscious of the duties which he and every man who sets himself up as a Literary Executor, owe the dead."[28] Chivers continued to defend Poe's reputation until the end of his life.

Final years and death

From 1845 to 1850, Chivers had been living with his wife in Georgia, then spent the next five years in the North. His poetry collection Eonchs of Ruby, A Gift of Love was published in 1851 with a subtitle meant to capitalize on the gift book trend. Chivers explained the title: "The Word Eonch is the same as Concha Marina—Shell of the Sea. Eonch is used... merely for its euphony."[29] Throughout the collection, Chivers experiments with the sonic effects of words rather than their literal meaning.[30] Atlanta: or the True Blessed Island of Poesy: A Paul Epic in Three Lustra was first published in three installments in the Georgia Citizen beginning in January 1853.[31] Later that year, Memoralia; or, Philas of Amber Full of the Tears of Love was printed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and generally received unfavorably.[32] Very shortly after, the same publisher brought out Virginalia; or, Songs of My Summer Nights, a collection made up of poems that were generally under 200 lines each, about half of which had previously been published in magazines.[33]

By 1855, Chivers and his wife had moved back to Georgia and he predicted that the slavery issue would soon force his home state to break from the United States.[34] A slaveholder himself, Chivers did not believe that slaves should be abused, though he still defended the institution against abolitionists.[35] Struck with sudden illness, Chivers wrote his will before dying on December 18, 1858, in Decatur, Georgia.[36] His last words were, "All is perfect peace with me."[37] His last published work, a drama titled The Sons of Usna, had been published earlier that year.[34] At the time of his death, Chivers had prepared several manuscripts of his literary theory with the intention of publishing them in several volumes of books and as part of a lecture series.[38] In his will, he left one dollar for his first wife and their daughter.[5]

Poetic theory and literary reputation

In his poetry, Chivers made use of legends and themes from Native American culture, particularly the Cherokee, though often with Christian overtones.[39] He was also heavily influenced by the work of François-René de Chateaubriand[40] and Emanuel Swedenborg.[41] Many of Chivers's poems included themes of death and sorrow, often using images of shrouds, coffins, angels, and reunions with lost loves in the afterlife.[21] Religious conventions at the time made discussion of death popular, as was reflected in poetry. Because of his background as a doctor, Chivers was able to graphically depict the last moments before someone's death.[5]

Chivers believed in a close connection between poetry and God and that true poetry could only be written through divine inspiration. He once wrote: "Poets are the apostles of divine thought, who are clothed with an authority from the Most High, to work miracles in the minds of men".[42] He also wrote: "Poetry is the power given by God to man of manifesting... the wise relations that subsist between him and God", and it "is that crystal river of the soul which runs through all the avenues of life, and after purifying the affections of the heart, empties itself into the Sea of God".[43] In Nacoochee, the preface states: "Poetry is that crystal river of the soul which runs thorugh all the avenues of life, and after purifying the affections of the heart, empties itself into the Sea of God."[12] In his introduction to Atlanta, written in 1842 but not published until 1853, Chivers gives a lengthy discussion of his poetic theory, pre-dating many ideas Poe would suggest in "The Poetic Principle" (1850). Chivers, for example, suggests that poems should be short to be successful: "No poem of any considerable length... can be pleasing to any well-educated person for any length of time".[44] He also experimented with blank verse as early as 1832 and his 1853 collection, Virginalia, included mostly poems using blank verse.[45]

At least for a time, he considered Elizabeth Barrett Browning the best contemporary English poet.[46] Like many from his time, Chivers called for the development of a distinctive American literature and he especially encouraged young writers.[47] Poe called the 1845 poetry collection The Lost Pleiad "the honest and fervent utterance of an exquisitely sensitive heart."[21] Overall, he called Chivers "one of the best and one of the worst poets in America".[48] William Gilmore Simms offered conditional praise of Chivers's poetry as well: "He possesses a poetic ardor sufficiently fervid, and a singularly marked command of language. But he should have been caught young, and well-bitted, and subjected to the severest training... As an artist, Dr. Chivers is yet in his accidence."[6] Simms also commented that his works were too gloomy and melancholy.[11]

Though Chivers built up a mild reputation during his lifetime, counting Algernon Charles Swinburne among his admirers,[36] his fame faded away quickly after his death. Other writers that acknowledged his influence included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, and Rudyard Kipling.[49] Others, however, were more critical. One anonymous reviewer, possibly Evert Augustus Duyckinck, joked that Chivers was formulaic and suggested the formula included 30% Percy Bysshe Shelley, 20% Poe, 20% "mild idiocy", 10% "gibbering idiocy", 10% "raving mania" and 10% "sweetness and originality".[50] Literary scholar S. Foster Damon wrote that Chivers would have had a stronger reputation if he were born in the North and "the literary coteries there would surely have pruned and preserved him... But the time and space were against him."[13]

List of works

Eonchs of Ruby (1851)
The Path of Sorrow; or, the Lament of Youth (1832)
Conrad and Eudora; or, the Death of Alonzo (1834)
Nacoochee; or, the Beautiful Star With Other Poems (1837)
The Lost Pleiad, and Other Poems (1845)
Search After Truth; or, A New Revelation of the Psycho-Physiological Nature of Man. (1848)
Eonchs of Ruby: a Gift of Love (1851)
The Death of the Devil, A Serio-Ludicro, Tragico-Comico, Nigero-Whiteman Extravaganza (1852)
Atlanta; or, the True Blessed Island of Poesy, a Paul Epic (1853) [1]
Memoralia; or, Phials of Amber Full of the Tears of Love (1853)
Virginalia; or, Songs of My Summer Nights (1853)
The Sons of Usna: a Tragic Apotheosis in Five Acts (1858)

Further reading

Bell, Landon C. Poe and Chivers.Columbus: Charles A. Trowbridge Co., 1931.
Brown, Ellen Firsching. "The Genius and Tragedy of Georgia's Lost Poet". Georgia Backroads, Vol. 8 No. 3, Autumn 2009.
Damon, S. Foster. Thomas Holley Chivers, Friend of Poe. New York, 1930
Davis, Richard Beale, editor. Chivers' Life of Poe. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1952.

Notes

1.^ Nelson, 47
2.^ Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 260. ISBN 0195031865
3.^ Parks, 166
4.^ Watts, 113-114
5.^ Lombard, 13
6.^ Hubbell, 551
7.^ Whited, 404–405
8.^ Lombard, 14–15
9.^ Lombard, 12
10.^ Lombard, 14
11.^ Lombard, 46
12.^ Lombard, 38
13.^ Hubbell, 550
14.^ Lombard, 99
15.^ Kennedy, 54
16.^ Thomas and Jackson, 465
17.^ Meyers, 140
18.^ Silverman, 189-190
19.^ Silverman, 190
20.^ Poe, Edgar Allan (December 1841). "A Chapter on Autography (Part II)". Graham's Magazine. pp. 273–286.
21.^ aSilverman, 259
22.^ Chivers, Thomas Holley. Search After Truth. New York: Scholar's Facsimiles and Reprints, 1976.
23.^ Moss, 101
24.^ Lombard, 17
25.^ Lombard, 62–63
26.^ Parks, 182.
27.^ Nelson, 212
28.^ Chivers, 70
29.^ Lombard, 61
30.^ Lombard, 76
31.^ Lombard, 77
32.^ Lombard, 85
33.^ Lombard, 89
34.^ Lombard, 97
35.^ Lombard, 114
36.^ Lombard, 18
37.^ Hubbell, 552
38.^ Parks, 183
39.^ Lombard, 28
40.^ Lombard, 24
41.^ Lombard, 29
42.^ Parks, 158
43.^ Hubbell, 553
44.^ Lombard, 78
45.^ Lombard, 121
46.^ Parks, 169
47.^ Parks, 174
48.^ Thomas & Jackson. 353
49.^ Lombard, 132
50.^ Moore, Rayburn S. "A New Look at Thomas Holley Chivers", The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 13, no. 1. Fall 1980: University of North Carolina Press: 131.

Sources

Chivers, Thomas Holley. Chivers' Life of Poe, Richard Beale Davis (editor). New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1952.
Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607-1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954.
Kennedy, J. Gerald. "A Brief Biography", A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0195121503
Lombard, Charles M. Thomas Holley Chivers. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979. ISBN 0805772588
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992. ISBN 0815410387
Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981. ISBN 086576008X
Parks, Edd Winfield. Ante-Bellum Southern Literary Critics. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0060923318
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. ISBN 0783814011
Watts, Charles Henry. Thomas Holley Chivers; His Literary Career and His Poetry. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1956.
Whited, Stephen R. "Kentucky Tragedy", The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Joseph M. Flora and Lucinda Hardwick MacKethan (editors). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. ISBN 0807126926. Accessed January 24, 2008.

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.

-- enotes

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.

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" Published 1845

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also, to a certain degree, a hoax as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account. Poe toyed with this for a while before admitting it was a work of pure fiction in his "Marginalia."

Plot summary

The narrator presents the facts of the extraordinary case of Valdemar which have incited public discussion. He is interested in Mesmerism, a pseudoscience involving bringing a patient into a hypnogogic state by the influence of magnetism, a process which later developed into hypnotism. He points out that, as far as he knows, no one has ever been mesmerized at the point of death, and he is curious to see what effects mesmerism would have on a dying person. He considers experimenting on his friend Ernest Valdemar, an author whom he had previously mesmerized, and who has recently been diagnosed with phthisis (tuberculosis).

Valdemar consents to the experiment and informs the narrator by letter that he will probably die in twenty-four hours. Valdemar's two physicians inform the narrator of their patient's poor condition. After confirming again that Valdemar is willing to be part of the experiment, the narrator comes back the next night with two nurses and a medical student as witnesses. Again, Valdemar insists he is willing to take part and asks the narrator to hurry, for fear he has "deferred it for too long". Valdemar is quickly mesmerized, just as the two physicians return and serve as additional witnesses. In a trance, he reports first that he is dying - then that he is dead. The narrator leaves him in a mesmeric state for seven months, checking on him daily. During this time Valdemar is without pulse, heartbeat or perceptible breathing, his skin cold and pale.

Finally, the narrator makes attempts to awaken Valdemar, asking questions which are answered with difficulty, his voice seemingly coming from his swollen, blackened tongue. In between trance and wakefulness, Valdemar's tongue begs to quickly either put him back to sleep or to wake him. As Valdemar's voice shouts "dead! dead!" repeatedly, the narrator takes Valdemar out of his trance; in the process, Valdemar's entire body immediately decays into a "nearly liquid mass of loathsome—of detestable putrescence."

 

Analysis

Poe uses particularly detailed descriptions and relatively high levels of gore in "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," suggesting Poe deeply studied medical texts.[1] Valdemar's eyes at one point leak a "profuse outflowing of a yellowish ichor," for example, though Poe's imagery in the story is best summed up in its final lines: "...his whole frame at once — within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk—crumbled—absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome—of detestable putrescence." The disgusting imagery almost certainly inspired later fiction including that of H. P. Lovecraft.[2] Those final lines make up one of the most powerfully effective moments in Poe's work, incorporating shock, disgust, and uneasiness into one moment.[3] This ending shows that attempts to appropriate power over death will have hideous results[4] and, therefore, ultimately be unsuccessful.[5]

In Spanish, "Valdemar" roughly translates to "valley of the sea." The name suggests both solid and liquid states; this meaning is emphasized in the imagery in the story as Valdemar's body goes from its normal solid state to liquid in the final climactic lines.[6] Poe also uses teeth as a symbol; he typically uses teeth in his works to symbolize mortality. Other uses include the "sepulchral and disgusting" horse's teeth in "Metzengerstein," obsessing over teeth in "Berenice," and the sound of grating teeth in "Hop-Frog."[7]

Valdemar's death by tuberculosis, and attempts to postpone his death, may have been influenced by Poe's wife, Virginia.[2] At the time of this story's publication, she had been suffering from tuberculosis for four years.[1] Poe's extreme detail in "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" may have been based on Virginia's actual suffering.[6] Additionally, Poe may have been inspired by Andrew Jackson Davis, whose lectures on mesmerism he had attended.[8] Valdemar's death, however, is not portrayed sentimentally as Poe's typical theme of "the death of a beautiful woman" portrayed in other works such as "Ligeia" and "Morella." The death of this male character contrasts as brutal and sensational.[9]

Reception and critical response

Many readers thought the story to be a scientific report. Robert Collyer, an English magnetic healer visiting Boston, wrote to Poe saying that he himself had performed a similar act to revive a man who had been pronounced dead (in truth, the man was actually a drunk sailor who was revived by a hot bath). Another Englishman, Thomas South, used the story as a case study in his book Early Magnetism in its Higher Relations to Humanity in 1846.[10] Medical student George C. Eveleth wrote to Poe: "I have strenuously held that it was true. But I tell you that I strongly suspect it for a hoax."[11] A Scottish reader named Archibald Ramsay wrote to Poe "as a believer in Mesmerism" asking about the story. "It details... most extraordinary circumstances", he wrote, concerned that it had been labeled a hoax. "For the sake of... Science and of truth", he requested an answer from Poe himself. Poe's response: "Hoax is precisely the word suited... Some few persons believe it—but I do not—and don't you."[12] He received many similar letters, replying to one such letter from a friend, he added the succinct postscript: "P.S. The 'Valdemar Case' was a hoax, of course."[13] In the Daily Tribune, editor Horace Greeley noted "that several good matter-of-fact citizens" were tricked by it but "whoever thought it a veracious recital must have the bump of Faith large, very large indeed."[14]

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to Poe about the story to commend him on his ability of "making horrible improbabilities seem near and familiar."[15] Virginia poet Philip Pendleton Cooke also wrote to Poe, calling the story "the most damnable, vraisemblable, horrible, hair-lifting, shocking, ingenious chapter of fiction that any brain ever conceived or hand traced. That gelatinous, viscous sound of man's voice! there never was such an idea before."[16] Literary critic and professor George Edward Woodberry said that the story "for mere physical disgust and foul horror, has no rival in literature."[17] Scholar James M. Hutchisson refers to the story as "probably Poe's most gruesome tale."[18]

Rudyard Kipling, an admirer of Poe, references "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" in his story "In the House of Suddhoo." The story suggests the disastrous results of sorcery in trying to save his sick son's life. One spell requires the head of a dead baby, which seems to speak. The narrator says, "Read Poe's account of the voice that came from the mesmerised dying man, and you will realise less than one half of the horror of that head's voice."[19]

Publication history

While editor of The Broadway Journal, Poe printed a letter from a New York physician named Dr. A. Sidney Doane which recounted a surgical operation performed while a patient was "in a magnetic sleep"; the letter served as inspiration for Poe's tale.[20] "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" was published simultaneously in the December 20, 1845, issue of the Broadway Journal and the December 1845 issue of American Review: A Whig Journal[8]—the latter journal used the title "The Facts in M. Valdemar's Case."[21] It was also republished in England, first as a pamphlet edition as "Mesmerism in Articulo Mortis" and later as "The Last Days of M. Valdemar."[22]

Adaptations

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" was adapted into film in Argentina in 1960 as a segment of Masterpieces of Horror, first shown in the United States in 1965. It was also one of three Poe-inspired segments in the 1962 film Roger Corman-directed Tales of Terror.[8] It was later adapted by George A. Romero in Two Evil Eyes (1990). The radio drama series Radio Tales produced an adaptation of the story entitled "Edgar Allan Poe's Valdemar" (2000) for National Public Radio. The story was also loosely adapted into the black comedy The Mesmerist (2002).

References

1.^ Stashower, Daniel. The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder. New York: Dutton, 2006: 275. ISBN 052594981X
2.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York City: Harper Perennial, 1991: 294. ISBN 0060923318
3.^ Elmer, Jonathan. "Terminate or Liquidate? Poe Sensationalism, and the Sentimental Tradition" collected in The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995: 116. ISBN 0801850258
4.^ Selley, April. "Poe and the Will" as collected in Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, edited by Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, Inc., 1990: 97. ISBN 0961644923
5.^ Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005: 158. ISBN 1-57806-721-9
6.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York City: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 179. ISBN 0815410387
7.^ Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987: 79. ISBN 0300037732
8.^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York City: Checkmark Books, 2001: 85. ISBN 081604161X
9.^ Elmer, Jonathan. "Terminate or Liquidate? Poe Sensationalism, and the Sentimental Tradition" collected in The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995: 108. ISBN 0801850258
10.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York City: Harper Perennial, 1991. ISBN 0060923318 p. 294–295
11.^ Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Chicago: The John C. Winston Company, 1926: 1189.
12.^ Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Chicago: The John C. Winston Company, 1926: 1188–1189.
13.^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 529. ISBN 0801857309
14.^ 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: 603. ISBN 0816187347
15.^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. p. 484. ISBN 0801857309
16.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York City: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 179-180. ISBN 0815410387
17.^ Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Chicago: The John C. Winston Company, 1926: 1075.
18.^ Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005: 157. ISBN 1-57806-721-9
19.^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 1992: 291. ISBN 0815410387
20.^ 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: 498. ISBN 0816187347
21.^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 470. ISBN 0801857309
22.^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 516. ISBN 0801857309

Deathday: Fitz-Greene Halleck 1867 Poet & Poe Associate

Fitz-Greene Halleck (July 8, 1790 – November 19, 1867) was an American poet, born and died at Guilford, Connecticut.

Biography

Early life

Fitz-Greene Halleck was born on July 8, 1790,[1] in Guilford, Connecticut at what was the corner of Whitfield and Water Streets.[2] At two years old, he was the victim of a prank when two soldiers fired off their guns next to his left ear; he was partially deaf for the remainder of his life.[3] He left school at 15 to work in his family's shop in Guilford.

Early career

In May 1811, Halleck moved to New York City to find work. After a month of searching, he had all but given up and made plans to move to Richmond, Virginia instead when he was hired by a banker named Jacob Barker.[4] He remained in Barker's employ for the next 20 years.

Halleck's first literary works of note were written with Joseph Rodman Drake. They penned the anonymous "Croaker Papers" which were satires of New York Society. The Croakers were perhaps the first popular literary satire of New York, and New York society (then far from a world cultural center) was overcome with excitement at being considered worthy of erudite derision.

Halleck then penned Fanny, his longest poem, was another satire on the literature, fashions, and politics of the time. Published anonymously in December 1819, it proved so popular that the initial 50 cent edition was fetching up to $10. Two years later, its continuing popularity inspired Halleck to amend an additional 50 stanzas.[5]

Drake had advised Halleck to pursue becoming a nationally-known poet and to sit on "Appalachia's brow" to take in the immense power of nature and use it to inspire his imagination.[6] A medical student, Drake died of consumption at 25 and Halleck commemorated his friend's death with a mournful poem that is considered by many as his most heartfelt, beginning "Green be the turf above thee" (1820). Drake's widow, Sarah Eckford Drake, attempted to make Halleck her second husband, despite Halleck's occasional satires of her, including one where he referred to her as a witch. She died eight years later.[7]

In 1822, Halleck visited Europe, and the traces of this are found in most of his subsequent poetry, e.g. his lines on Robert Burns, and on Alnwick Castle.

Professional and later life

On May 15, 1832, Halleck became the private secretary to John Jacob Astor and was appointed by him one of the original trustees of the Astor Library of New York. He also functioned as Astor's cultural tutor, advising him on what pieces of art to purchase. The immensely wealthy—and tightfisted—Astor in his will left to Halleck an annuity of only $200, a meager sum which Astor's son William increased to $1,500. In 1849 he retired to his hometown of Guilford where he spent the rest of his life living with his older unmarried sister.

As a writer, Halleck became associated with the New York-based Knickerbocker Group, as did his collaborator Drake.

In April 1860, a lingering illness caused enough concern for Halleck that he gave instructions for his funeral and burial.[8] Increasingly irritable in his later years, he often turned down requests for public appearances and complained about being pestered by "frequent appeals for letters to hard-hearted editors."[9] People even named their children after the poet, much to Halleck's annoyance. He wrote, "I am favored by affectionate fathers with epistles announcing that their eldest-born has been named after me, a calamity that costs me a letter of profound gratefulness."[9] Halleck's last major poem, "Young America," was published in 1867 in the New York Ledger.[3] On November 19, 1867, around 11:00 at night, he called out to his sister, "Marie, hand me my pantaloons, if you please." He died without making another sound before she could turn around.[10] He is buried at Alderbrook Cemetery in Guilford.[11]

Sexuality

It has been posited that Halleck was in love with Joseph Rodman Drake. This presumption is not without reason; Halleck describes serving as best man at Drake's wedding:

"[Drake] has married, and, as his wife's father is rich, I imagine he will write no more. He was poor, as poets, of course, always are, and offered himself a sacrifice at the shrine of Hymen to shun the 'pains and penalties' of poverty. I officiated as groomsman, though much against my will. His wife was good natured, and loves him to distraction. He is perhaps the handsomest man in New York, - a face like an angel, a form like an Apollo; and, as I well knew that his person was the true index of his mind, I felt myself during the ceremony as committing a crime in aiding and assisting such a sacrifice."[12]

In his will, he asked for the body of his friend Drake to be dug up and reburied with him.[13] His wish almost came true in 1903, when plans were set to move the bodies of Drake, his wife, daughter, sister, and nephew to Halleck's plot in Guilford.[14] A biographer noted that Halleck's last major work, "Young America," was both "a jaded critique of marriage and a pederastic boy-worship reminiscent of classical homosexuality."[3]

Halleck's first infatuation with another man was much earlier. At nineteen, he became enamored with a young Cuban named Carlos Menie. A few early poems were dedicated to Menie.[15]

Critical response

In the mid to late 19th century, Halleck was regarded as one of America's leading poets, dubbed "the American Byron"..Amongst his most well-known was "Marco Bozzaris," which Halleck noted was "puffed in a thousand (more or less) magazines and newspapers" in the United States, England, Scotland, and Ireland.[16] Charles Dickens spoke very fondly of the "accomplished writer" in a January 1868 letter to William Makepeace Thackeray (as recounted in "Thackeray in the United States"). It is not clear how much of Dickens's fondness is based on Halleck's poetical ability and how much on his wit and charm, which is often lauded by his contemporaries. Abraham Lincoln occasionally read Halleck's poetry aloud to friends in the White House.

American writer and critic Edgar Allan Poe reviewed Halleck's poetry collection Alnwick Castle. Regarding Halleck's poem "Fanny," he said, "to uncultivated ears... [it is] endurable, but to the practiced versifier it is little less than torture."[17] In the September 1843 issue of Graham's Magazine, Poe wrote that the Halleck "has nearly abandoned the Muses, much to the regret of his friends and to the neglect of his reputation."[17]

(Poe Forward note: When Poe's BROADWAY JOURNAL was in danger of going under, he appealed to Halleck for money and received a signed note of endorsement. Poe never got the money. How this affected his review of Halleck's work is up for speculation.)

Halleck spent several years without producing any literary works. After his death, poet William Cullen Bryant addressed the New York Historical Society on February 2, 1869, and spoke about this blank period in Halleck's career. He ultimately concluded: "Whatever the reason that Halleck ceased so early to write, let us congratulate ourselves that he wrote at all."[18]

Legacy

In July 1869 a granite monument was erected to him in Guilford, Connecticut, the first monument ever erected in celebration of an American Poet. Poet Bayard Taylor, author of America's first homosexual novel Joseph and His Friend (1870), spoke at the commemoration.[19]

In 1877 a statue was erected to him, the first statue to commemorate an American poet. It still stands on the Literary Walk on the Mall in New York City's Central Park.

In 2006 The Fitz-Greene Halleck Society was founded to raise awareness of this forgotten historical figure. The Society sees Halleck's value as a lesson of the fleeting nature of fame, but in no way seeks to mock the now almost completely forgotten poet.

Further reading

Wilson, The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck (New York, 1869)
Wilson, The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck (New York, 1869)
Hallock, John Wesley Matthew. "The First Statue: Fitz-Greene Halleck and Homotextual Representation in Nineteenth-Century America." [Temple U, 1997], DAI, Vol. 58-06A (1997): 2209.

Notes

1.^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 44. ISBN 086576008X
2.^ Ehrlich and Carruth, 76
3.^ Hallock, 9
4.^ Hallock, 43
5.^ Burt, Daniel S. The Chronology of American Literature: America's Literary Achievements From the Colonial Era to Modern Times. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004: 126. ISBN 9780618168217
6.^ Callow, James T. Kindred Spirits: Knickerbocker Writers and American Artists, 1807–1855. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967: 147.
7.^ Hallock, 90–92
8.^ Hallock, 142
9.^ Hallock, 143
10.^ Hallock, 150
11.^ Ehrlich and Carruth, 77
12.^ James Grant Wilson, The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck, pg. 184. New York: Appleton and Company, 1869.
13.^ "To Exhume Drake's Body", The New York Times. September 19, 1903: p. 2
14.^ Hallock, 91
15.^ Hallock, 32
16.^ Hallock, 97
17.^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001: 103. ISBN 081604161X
18.^ Chubb, Edwin Watts. Stories of Authors, British & American. Echo Library, 2008: 152. ISBN 9781406892536
19.^ Hallock, 151

References

Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. ISBN 0195031865
Hallock, John W. M. The American Byron: Homosexuality and the Fall of Fitz-Greene Halleck. University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. ISBN 0299168042

"The Cask of Amontillado" Published 1846

"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado") is a short story, written by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book.

The story is set in a nameless Italian city in an unspecified year (possibly in the 18th century) and concerns the deadly revenge taken by the narrator on a friend who he claims has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive — in this case, by immurement.

As in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe conveys the story through the murderer's perspective.

Plot summary

Montresor tells the story of the night that he took his revenge on Fortunato, a fellow nobleman. Angry over some unspecified insult, he plots to murder his friend during Carnival when the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley.

He baits Fortunato by telling him he has obtained what he believes to be a pipe (about 130 gallons,[1] 492 litres) of Amontillado, a rare and valuable sherry wine. He claims he wants his friend's expert opinion on the subject. Fortunato goes with Montresor to the wine cellars of the latter's palazzo, where they wander in the catacombs. Montresor offers wine (first Medoc, then De Grave) to Fortunato; at one point, Fortunato makes an elaborate, grotesque gesture with an upraised wine bottle. When Montresor appears not to recognize the gesture, Fortunato asks, "You are not of the masons?" Montresor says he is, and when Fortunato, disbelieving, requests a sign, Montresor displays a trowel he had been hiding.

Montresor warns Fortunato, who has a bad cough, of the damp, and suggests they go back; Fortunato insists on continuing, claiming that "[he] shall not die of a cough." During their walk, Montresor mentions his family coat of arms: a foot in a blue background crushing a snake whose fangs are embedded in the foot's heel, with the motto Nemo me impune lacessit ("No one insults me with impunity"). When they come to a niche, Montresor tells his victim that the Amontillado is within. Fortunato enters and, drunk and unsuspecting, does not resist as Montresor quickly chains him to the wall. Montresor then declares that, since Fortunato won't go back, he must "positively leave [him]."

Montresor walls up the niche, entombing his friend alive. At first, Fortunato, who sobers up faster than Montresor anticipated he would, shakes the chains, trying to escape. The narrator stops working for a while so he can enjoy the sound. Fortunato then screams for help, but Montresor mocks his cries, knowing nobody can hear them. Fortunato laughs weakly and tries to pretend that he is the subject of a joke and that people will be waiting for him (including the Lady Fortunato). As the murderer finishes the topmost row of stones, Fortunato wails "For the love of God, Montresor!" Montresor replies, "Yes, for the love of God!" He listens for a reply but hears only the jester's bells ringing. Before placing the last stone, he drops a burning torch through the gap. He claims that he feels sick at heart, but dismisses this reaction as an effect of the dampness of the catacombs.

In the last few sentences, Montresor reveals that it has been 50 years since that night, he has never been caught, and Fortunato's body still hangs from its chains in the niche where he left it. The murderer, seemingly unrepentant, ends the story by remarking: In pace requiescat! ("May he rest in peace!").

Publication history

"The Cask of Amontillado" was first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book[2] which was, at the time, the most popular periodical in America.[3] The story was only published one additional time during Poe's life.[4]

Analysis

Although the subject matter of Poe's story is a murder, "The Cask of Amontillado" is not a tale of detection like "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" or "The Purloined Letter"; there is no investigation of Montresor's crime and the criminal himself explains how he committed the murder. The mystery in "The Cask of Amontillado" is in Montresor's motive for murder. Without a detective in the story, it is up to the reader to solve the mystery.[5]

Montresor never specifies his motive beyond than the vague "thousand injuries" to which he refers. Many commentators conclude that, lacking significant reason, Montresor must be insane, though even this is questionable because of the intricate details of the plot.[5]

Though Fortunato is presented as a connoisseur of fine wine, his actions in the story make it questionable. For example, he comments on another nobleman being unable to distinguish Amontillado from Sherry when Amontillado is in fact a type of Sherry to begin with and treats De Grave, an expensive French wine, with very little regard by drinking it in a single gulp.[1]

Poe may have known bricklaying through personal experience. Many periods in Poe's life lack significant biographical details, including what he did after leaving the Southern Literary Messenger in 1837.[6] Poe biographer John H. Ingram wrote to Sarah Helen Whitman that someone named "Allen" said that Poe worked "in the brickyard 'late in the fall of 1834.' This source has been identified as Robert T. P. Allen, a fellow West Point student during Poe's time there.[7]

Inspiration

An apocryphal legend holds that the inspiration for "The Cask of Amontillado" came from a story Poe had heard at Castle Island (South Boston), Massachusetts, when he was a private there in 1827.[8] According to this legend, while stationed at Castle Island in 1827 he saw a monument to Lieutenant Robert Massie. Massie had been killed in a sword duel on Christmas Day 1817 by Lieutenant Gustavus Drane, following a dispute during a card game.[9] According to the legend, other soldiers then took revenge on Drane by getting him drunk, luring him into the dungeon, chaining him to a wall, and sealing him in a vault.[10] (though the last part is untrue, as Drane was courtmartialled and acquitted,[11] living until 1846[12]). A report of a skeleton discovered on the island may be a confused remembering of Poe's major source, Joel Headley's "A Man Built in a Wall" (1844), which recounts the author's seeing an immured skeleton in the wall of a church in Italy.[13] Headley's story includes details very similar to "The Cask of Amontillado"; in addition to walling an enemy into a hidden niche, the story details the careful placement of the bricks, the motive of revenge, and the victim's agonized moaning. Poe may have also seen similar themes in Honoré de Balzac's "Le Grande Bretêche" (Democratic Review, November 1843) or his friend George Lippard's The Quaker City; or The Monks of Monk Hall (1845).[14] Poe may have borrowed Montresor's family motto Nemo me impune lacessit from James Fenimore Cooper, who used the line in The Last of the Mohicans (1826).[15]

Poe wrote his tale, however, as a response to his personal rival Thomas Dunn English. Poe and English had several confrontations, usually revolving around literary caricatures of one another. Poe thought that one of English's writings went a bit too far, and successfully sued the other man's editors at The New York Mirror for libel in 1846.[16] That year English published a revenge-based novel called 1844, or, The Power of the S.F. Its plot was convoluted and difficult to follow, but made references to secret societies and ultimately had a main theme of revenge. It included a character named Marmaduke Hammerhead, the famous author of "The Black Crow," who uses phrases like "Nevermore" and "lost Lenore," referring to Poe's poem "The Raven." This parody of Poe was depicted as a drunkard, liar, and an abusive lover.

Poe responded with "The Cask of Amontillado," using very specific references to English's novel. In Poe's story, for example, Fortunato makes reference to the secret society of Masons, similar to the secret society in 1844, and even makes a gesture similar to one portrayed in 1844 (it was a signal of distress). English had also used an image of a token with a hawk grasping a snake in its claws, similar to Montresor's coat of arms bearing a foot stomping on a snake — though in this image, the snake is biting the heel. In fact, much of the scene of "The Cask of Amontillado" comes from a scene in 1844 that takes place in a subterranean vault. In the end, then, it is Poe who "punishes with impunity" by not taking credit for his own literary revenge and by crafting a concise tale (as opposed to a novel) with a singular effect, as he had suggested in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition."[17]

Poe may have also been inspired, at least in part, by the Washingtonian movement, a fellowship that promoted temperance. The group was made up of reformed drinkers who tried to scare people into abstaining from alcohol. Poe may have made a promise to join the movement in 1843 after a bout of drinking with the hopes of gaining a political appointment. "The Cask of Amontillado" then may be a "dark temperance tale," meant to shock people into realizing the dangers of drinking.[18]

Poe scholar Richard P. Benton has stated his belief that "Poe's protagonist is an Englished version of the French Montrésor" and has argued forcefully that Poe's model for Montresor "was Claude de Bourdeille, Count of Montrésor, the 17th-century political conspirator in the entourage of King Louis XIII's weak-willed brother, Gaston d'Orléans".[19] The "noted intriguer and memoir-writer" was first linked to "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe scholar Burton R. Pollin.[19][20]

References

1.^ Cecil, L. Moffitt. "Poe's Wine List", from Poe Studies, Vol. V, no. 2. December 1972. p. 41.
2.^ Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. Checkmark Books, 2001. ISBN 081604161X p. 45
3.^ Reynolds, David F. "Poe's Art of Transformation: 'The Cask of Amontillado' in Its Cultural Context", as collected in The American Novel: New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, Kenneth Silverman, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521422433 p. 101
4.^ Edgar Allan Poe — "The Cask of Amontillado" at the Edgar Allan Poe Society online
5.^ Baraban, Elena V. "The Motive for Murder in 'The Cask of Amontillado' by Edgar Allan Poe", Rocky Mountain E-Review of Language and Literature. Volume 58, Number 2. Fall 2004.
6.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 129–130. ISBN 0-06-092331-8
7.^ 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: 141. ISBN0-7838-1401-1.
8.^ Bergen, Philip. Old Boston in Early Photographs. Boston: Bostonian Society, 1990. p. 106
9.^ Vrabel, Jim. When in Boston: a time line and almanac. Northeastern University, 2004. ISBN 1-55553-620-4 / ISBN 1-15553-621-2 p. 105
10.^ Wilson, Susan. Literary Trail of Greater Boston. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000: 37. ISBN 0-618-05013-2
11.^ Vrabel, p. 105
12.^ Battery B, 4th U.S. Light Artillery - First Lieutenants of the 4th U.S. Artillery
13.^ Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, editor. Tales and Sketches: Volume II. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2000. p. 1254
14.^ Reynolds, David F. "Poe's Art of Transformation: 'The Cask of Amontillado' in Its Cultural Context", as collected in The American Novel: New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, Kenneth Silverman, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521422433 pp. 94–5
15.^ Jacobs, Edward Craney. "Marginalia – A Possible Debt to Cooper," collected in Poe Studies, vol. VIII, no. 1. June 1976.
16.^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991: 312–313. ISBN 0-06-092331-8
17.^ Rust, Richard D. "Punish with Impunity: Poe, Thomas Dunn English and 'The Cask of Amontillado'" in The Edgar Allan Poe Review, Vol. II, Issue 2 – Fall, 2001, St. Joseph's University.
18.^ Reynolds, David F. "Poe's Art of Transformation: 'The Cask of Amontillado' in Its Cultural Context", as collected in The American Novel: New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, Kenneth Silverman, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521422433 pp. 96–7
19.^ Benton, Richard P. (June 1996). "Poe's 'The Cask of Amontillado': Its Cultural and Historical Backgrounds". Poe Studies 29: 19–27.
20.^ Burton R. Pollin (1970). "Notre-Dame de Paris in Two of the Tales". Discoveries in Poe. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 24–37.

Edgar A. Poe's Funeral 1849

Poe's funeral was a simple one, held at 4 p.m. on Monday, October 8, 1849. Few people attended the ceremony. Poe's uncle, Henry Herring, provided a simple mahogany coffin, and a cousin, Neilson Poe, supplied the hearse. Moran's wife made his shroud. The funeral was presided over by the Reverend W. T. D. Clemm, cousin of Poe's wife, Virginia. Also in attendance were Dr. Snodgrass, Baltimore lawyer and former University of Virginia classmate Zaccheus Collins Lee, Poe's first cousin Elizabeth Herring and her husband, and former schoolmaster Joseph Clarke. The entire ceremony lasted only three minutes in the cold, damp weather. Reverend Clemm decided not to bother with a sermon because the crowd was too small. Sexton George W. Spence wrote of the weather: "It was a dark and gloomy day, not raining but just kind of raw and threatening." Poe was buried in a cheap coffin that lacked handles, a nameplate, cloth lining, or a cushion for his head.

Edgar A. Poe Dies in Baltimore Hospital 1849

The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849, has remained mysterious: the circumstances leading up to it are uncertain and the cause of death is disputed. On October 3, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance," according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on Sunday, October 7. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this condition.

Much of the extant information about the last few days of Poe's life comes from his attending physician, Dr. John Joseph Moran, though his credibility is questionable. Poe was buried after a small funeral at the back of Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, but his remains were moved to a new grave with a larger monument in 1875. It has been questioned whether the correct corpse was moved. The 1875 monument also marks the burial place of Poe's wife, Virginia, and his mother-in-law, Maria. Theories as to what caused Poe's death include suicide, murder, cholera, rabies, syphilis, influenza, and that Poe was a victim of cooping. Evidence of the influence of alcohol is strongly disputed.

After Poe's death, Rufus Wilmot Griswold wrote his obituary under the pseudonym "Ludwig." Griswold, who became the literary executor of Poe's estate, was actually a rival of Poe and later published his first full biography, depicting him as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman. Much of the evidence for this image of Poe is believed to have been forged by Griswold, and though friends of Poe denounced it, this interpretation had lasting impact.

All medical records and documents, including Poe's death certificate, have been lost, if they ever existed. The precise cause of Poe's death is disputed, but many theories exist. Many biographers have addressed the issue and reached different conclusions, ranging from Jeffrey Meyers's assertion that it was hypoglycemia to John Evangelist Walsh's conspiratorial murder plot theory. It has also been suggested that Poe's death might have resulted from suicide related to depression. In 1848, he nearly died from an overdose of laudanum, readily available as a tranquilizer and pain killer. Though it is unclear if this was a true suicide attempt or just a miscalculation on Poe's part, it did not lead to Poe's death a year later.

Snodgrass was convinced that Poe died from alcoholism and did a great deal to popularize this idea. He was a supporter of the temperance movement and found Poe a useful example in his temperance work. However, Snodgrass's writings on the topic have been proven untrustworthy. Moran contradicted Snodgrass by stating in his own 1885 account that Poe did not die under the effect of any intoxicant. Moran claimed that Poe "had not the slightest odor of liquor upon his breath or person." Even so, some newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation," euphemisms for deaths from disgraceful causes such as alcoholism. In a study of Poe, a psychologist suggested that Poe had dipsomania, a condition that causes frequent seizures that lead to excesses, often alcoholic, during which the victim cannot remember what has happened to him or her.

However, Poe's characterization as an uncontrollable alcoholic is disputed. His drinking companion for a time, Thomas Mayne Reid, admitted that the two engaged in wild "frolics" but that Poe "never went beyond the innocent mirth in which we all indulge... While acknowledging this as one of Poe's failings, I can speak truly of its not being habitual." Some believe Poe had a severe susceptibility to alcohol and became drunk after one glass of wine. He only drank during difficult periods of his life and sometimes went several months at a time without alcohol. Adding further confusion about the frequency of Poe's use of alcohol was his membership in the Sons of Temperance at the time of his death. William Glenn, who administered Poe's pledge, wrote years later that the temperance community had no reason to believe Poe had violated his pledge while in Richmond. Suggestions of a drug overdose have also been proven to be untrue, though it is still often reported. Thomas Dunn English, an admitted enemy of Poe and a trained doctor, insisted that Poe was not a drug user. He wrote: "Had Poe the opium habit when I knew him (before 1846) I should both as a physician and a man of observation, have discovered it during his frequent visits to my rooms, my visits at his house, and our meetings elsewhere – I saw no signs of it and believe the charge to be a baseless slander."

Numerous other causes of death have been proposed over the years, including several forms of rare brain disease or a brain tumor, diabetes, various types of enzyme deficiency, syphilis, apoplexy, delirium tremens, epilepsy and meningeal inflammation. A doctor named John W. Francis examined Poe in May 1848 and believed Poe had heart disease, which Poe later denied. A 2006 test of a sample of Poe's hair provides evidence against the possibility of lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, and similar toxic heavy-metal exposures. Cholera has also been suggested. Poe had passed through Philadelphia in early 1849 during a cholera epidemic. He got sick during his time in the city and wrote a letter to his aunt, Maria Clemm, saying that he may "have had the cholera, or spasms quite as bad."

Because Poe was found on the day of an election, it was suggested as early as 1872 that he was the victim of cooping. This was a ballot-box-stuffing scam in which victims were shanghaied, drugged, and used as a pawn to vote for a political party at multiple locations. Cooping had become the standard explanation for Poe's death in most of his biographies for several decades, though his status in Baltimore may have made him too recognizable for this scam to have worked. More recently, credible evidence that Poe's death resulted from rabies has been presented.

Edgar A. Poe Found Delirious 1849

On September 27, 1849, Poe left Richmond, Virginia, on his way home to New York. No reliable evidence exists about Poe's whereabouts until a week later on October 3, when he was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, outside Ryan's Tavern (sometimes referred to as Gunner's Hall). A printer named Joseph W. Walker sent a letter requesting help from an acquaintance of Poe, Dr. Joseph E. Snodgrass. His letter reads:

“Dear Sir—There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan's 4th ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, and he says he is acquainted with you, and I assure you, he is in need of immediate assistance.

Yours, in haste, Jos. W. Walker”

Snodgrass later claimed the note said that Poe was "in a state of beastly intoxication," but the original letter proves otherwise.

Snodgrass's first-hand account describes Poe's appearance as "repulsive," with unkempt hair, a haggard, unwashed face and "lusterless and vacant" eyes. His clothing, Snodgrass said, which included a dirty shirt but no vest and unpolished shoes, was worn and did not fit well. Dr. John Joseph Moran, who was Poe's attending physician, gives his own detailed account of Poe's appearance that day: "a stained faded, old bombazine coat, pantaloons of a similar character, a pair of worn-out shoes run down at the heels, and an old straw hat." Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in this condition, and it is believed the clothes he was wearing were not his own, not least because wearing shabby clothes was out of character for Poe.

Moran cared for Poe at the for-profit Washington College Hospital on Broadway and Fayette Street. He was denied any visitors and was confined in a prison-like room with barred windows in a section of the building reserved for drunk people. Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though no one has ever been able to identify the person to whom he referred. One possibility is that he was recalling an encounter with Jeremiah N. Reynolds, a newspaper editor and explorer who may have inspired the novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Another possibility is Henry R. Reynolds, one of the judges overseeing the Fourth Ward Polls at Ryan's Tavern, who may have met Poe on Election Day. Poe may have instead been calling for "Herring," as the author had an uncle-in-law in Baltimore named Henry Herring. In fact, in later testimonies Moran avoided reference to Reynolds but mentioned a visit by a "Misses Herring." He also claimed he attempted to cheer Poe up during one of the few times Poe was awake. When Moran told his patient that he would soon be enjoying the company of friends, Poe allegedly replied that "the best thing his friend could do would be to blow out his brains with a pistol."

In Poe's distressed state, he made reference to a wife in Richmond. He may have been hallucinating, thinking that his wife, Virginia, was still alive, or he may have been referring to Sarah Elmira Royster, to whom he had recently proposed. He did not know what had happened to his trunk of belongings which, it transpired, had been left behind at the Swan Tavern in Richmond. Moran reported that Poe's final words were "Lord, help my poor soul" before dying on October 7, 1849.

Deathday: Robert Bloch 1994 - Father of PSYCHO

(This photo is from my 1989 interview with RB.)

Robert Albert Bloch (April 5, 1917 – September 23, 1994) was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction.

Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle. H. P. Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent. He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America. Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville and tried to break into writing for nationally-known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the 1960s, he wrote three scripts for Star Trek. In 2008, The Library of America selected Bloch’s story “The Shambles of Ed Gein” for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.

Life

Bloch was born in Chicago, the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884 - 1952), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880 - 1944), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.

Bloch died in 1994 in Los Angeles. He was cremated and interred in the Room of Prayer columbarium at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Career

During the 1930s, Bloch was an avid reader of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. H. P. Lovecraft, a frequent contributor to that magazine, became one of his favorite writers. As a teenager, Bloch befriended and corresponded with Lovecraft, who gave the promising youngster advice on his own fiction-writing efforts.[1] Bloch's first professional sales, at the age of just seventeen, were to Weird Tales with the short stories "The Feast in the Abbey" and "The Secret in the Tomb". Bloch's early stories were strongly influenced by Lovecraft. Indeed, a number of his stories were set in, and extended, the world of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It was Bloch who invented, for example, the oft-cited Mythos texts De Vermis Mysteriis and Cultes des Goules.

The young Bloch appears, thinly disguised, as the character "Robert Blake" in Lovecraft's story "The Haunter of the Dark", which is dedicated to Bloch. In this story, Lovecraft kills off the Bloch character, repaying a courtesy Bloch earlier paid Lovecraft with his tale "The Shambler from the Stars", in which the Lovecraft-inspired figure dies; the story goes so far as to use Bloch's then-current street address in Milwaukee. (Bloch even had a signed certificate from Lovecraft [and some of his creations] giving Bloch permission to kill Lovecraft off in a story.) Bloch later wrote a third tale, "The Shadow From the Steeple," picking up where "The Haunter of the Dark" finished.

After Lovecraft's death in 1937, Bloch continued writing for Weird Tales, where he became one of its most popular authors. He also began contributing to other pulps, such as the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. He gradually evolved away from Lovecraftian imitations towards a unique style of his own. One of the first distinctly "Blochian" stories was "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which was published in Weird Tales in 1943. The story was Bloch's take on the Jack the Ripper legend, and was filled out with more genuine factual details of the case than many other fictional treatments.[2] Bloch followed up this story with a number of others in a similar vein dealing with half-historic, half-legendary figures such as the Man in the Iron Mask ("Iron Mask," 1944), the Marquis de Sade ("The Skull of the Marquis de Sade," 1945) and Lizzie Borden ("Lizzie Borden Took an Axe...," 1946).

Campaign manager for Carl Zeidler

In 1939, Bloch was contacted by James Doolittle, who was managing the campaign for a little-known assistant attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin named Carl Zeidler. He was asked to work on his speechwriting, advertising, and photo ops, in collaboration with Harold Gauer. They created elaborate campaign shows; in Bloch's 1993 autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, he gives an inside account of the campaign, and the innovations he and Gauer came up with — for instance, the original releasing-balloons-from-the-ceiling shtick. He comments bitterly on how, after Zeidler's victory, they were ignored and not even paid their promised salaries. He ends the story with a wryly philosophical point:

If Carl Zeidler had not asked Jim Doolittle to manage his campaign, Doolittle would never have contacted me about it. And the only reason Doolittle knew me to begin with was because he read my yarn ("The Cloak") in Unknown. Rattling this chain of circumstances, one may stretch it a bit further. If I had not written a little vampire story called "The Cloak," Carl Zeidler might never have become mayor of Milwaukee.

Psycho and screenwriting

Bloch became most famous as the author of the novel Psycho, one of the first examples of modern urban horror relying on realism rather than the supernatural[citation needed], which was adapted by Joseph Stefano into the screenplay for the 1960 film of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He had written an earlier split-personality short story, "The Real Bad Friend," which appeared in the February, 1957 Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, that foreshadowed the 1959 novel Psycho. His best-known work as a screenwriter is probably The Night Walker (1964), which he wrote for William Castle, although he also penned several scripts for the original series of Star Trek including "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," "Wolf in the Fold," and "Catspaw." He seemed happiest, among his television work, with his contributions to the Boris Karloff-hosted series Thriller.

Bloch also contributed to Harlan Ellison's science fiction anthology, Dangerous Visions. His story, "A Toy for Juliette," evoked both the Marquis de Sade and Jack the Ripper. In fact, Ellison's own contribution to the anthology was a direct follow-up of Bloch's, and was titled "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World."

Writings on Bloch

An early reference work by Australia's Graeme Flanagan, Robert Bloch: A Bio-Bibliography (1979) includes valuable material including interviews with Bloch and memoirs by fellow writers such as Harlan Ellison, Mary Elizabeth Counselman and Fritz Leiber.

Randall D. Larson has authored three reference books about Robert Bloch: The Robert Bloch Reader's Guide (1986, a literary analysis of Bloch's entire output through 1986), The Complete Robert Bloch (1986, an illustrated bibliography of Bloch's writing), and The Robert Bloch Companion (1986, collected interviews). In addition, an issue of Paperback Parade magazine (No. 39, August 1994) contains two articles by Larson on collecting Bloch - "Paperblochs: Robert Bloch in Paperback" and "Robert Bloch in Paperback."

There is an essay on Bloch's work, with particular reference to the novels Psycho and The Scarf, in S. T. Joshi's book The Modern Weird Tale (2001). Joshi examines Bloch's literary relationship with Lovecraft in a further essay in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004).

A new essay collection focusing on a range of Bloch's work is Robert Bloch: the Man Who Collected Psychos, edited by Benjamin J. Szumskyj (McFarland, 2009).

Bibliography

Novels

The Scarf (1947, rev. 1966)
Spiderweb (1954)
The Kidnapper (1954)
The Will to Kill (1954)
Shooting Star (1958) (note: published in a double volume with the ss collection Terror in the Night)
This Crowded Earth (1958)
Psycho (1959) (adapted into the 1960 film, Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; later remade in 1998 by Gus Van Sant)
The Dead Beat (1960)
Firebug (1961)
The Couch (1962)
Terror (1962)
Ladies Day / This Crowded Earth (1968)
The Star Stalker (1968)
The Todd Dossier (1969)
Sneak Preview (1971)
It's All in Your Mind (1971)
Night World (1972)
American Gothic (1974)
Strange Eons (1978) (a Cthulhu Mythos novel)
There Is a Serpent in Eden (1979)
Psycho II (1982) (unrelated to the film of the same name)
Night of the Ripper (1984)
Unholy Trinity (1986) (collects The Scarf, The Couch and The Dead Beat)
Lori (1989)
Screams: Three Novels of Suspense (collects The Will to Kill, Firebug and The Star Stalker)
Psycho House (1990) (unrelated to the films Psycho II, Psycho III or Psycho IV: The Beginning)
The Jekyll Legacy (1991)
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (1991) (Pulphouse; a 100-copy hardbound signed edition of Bloch's famous short story)
The Thing (1993) (Pretentious Press; a limited edition of 85 copies, only 9 bound in cloth, of the author's first appearance in print - a parody of H.P. Lovecraft which originally appeared in the April 1932 issue of The Quill, his Lincoln High School literary magazine)
Psycho - The 35th Anniversary Edition (1994) (Gauntlet Press; limited edition of 500 copies; the last work to be signed by Bloch before his death; includes a new intro by Richard Matheson and a new Afterword by Ray Bradbury)

Short-story collections

The Opener of the Way (1945)
Sea Kissed (1945)
Terror in the Night (1958) (note: published in a double volume with the novel Shooting Star)
Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares (1960)
Blood Runs Cold (1961)
Nightmares (1961)
More Nightmares (1961)
Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (1962)
Atoms and Evil (1962)
Horror 7 (1963)
Bogey Men (1963)
House of the Hatchet (1965)
The Skull of the Marquis de Sade (1965)
Tales in a Jugular Vein (1965)
Chamber of Horrors (1966)
The Living Demons (1967)
Dragons and Nightmares (1968)
Bloch and Bradbury (1969)
Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow (1971)
House of the Hatchet (1976)
The King of Terrors (1977)
The Best of Robert Bloch (1977)
Cold Chills (1977)
Out of the Mouths of Graves (1978)
Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of (1979)
Mysteries of the Worm (1981)
Midnight Pleasures (1987)
Lost in Space and Time With Lefty Feep (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 1: Final Reckonings (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 2: Bitter Ends (1987)
The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Volume 3: Last Rites (1987)
Fear and Trembling (1989)
Mysteries of the Worm (rev. 1993) from Chaosium books
The Early Fears (1994)
Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunacies (1998)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 1: The Devil With You! (1999)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 2: Hell on Earth (2000)
The Lost Bloch: Volume 3: Crimes and Punishments (2002)
The Reader's Bloch: Volume 1: The Fear Planet and Other Unusual Destinations (2005)
The Reader's Bloch: Volume 2: Skeleton in the Closet and Other Stories (2009)

Non-fiction

The Eighth Stage of Fandom (1962)
Out of My Head (1986)
Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography (1993)
Robert Bloch: Appreciations of the Master (1995)

Movies

The following is a list of films based on Bloch's work. For some of these he wrote the original screenplay; for others, he supplied the story or a novel (as in the case of Psycho) on which the screenplay was based.

Psycho (1960)
The Couch (1962)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1962)
Strait-Jacket (1964)
The Night Walker (1964)
The Skull (1965)
The Psychopath (1966)
Torture Garden (1967)
The Deadly Bees (1967)
The House That Dripped Blood (1970)
Asylum (1972)
The Cat Creature (Tv movie 1973)
The Dead Don't Die (Tv movie 1974)
The Amazing Captain Nemo (1978)
Psycho (1998)

References

1.^ Haining, Peter (1975). The Fantastic Pulps. Victor Gollancz Ltd. ISBN 0-575-02000-8.
2.^ Zinna, Eduardo. "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper". Casebook: Jack the Ripper.