Monday, January 18, 2010

Edgar Allan Poe Update

Edgar Allan Poe - Salon.com: "Edgar Allan Poe's fertile imagination has endured for more than 150 years -- and so has his pale, death-haunted image, with his sunken eyes, a trim mustache and unruly mop of curly hair.

However, scholars say Poe looked far more vigorous, perhaps even dashing, in his earlier years than he does in the well-known series of daguerreotypes taken in the final years of his life.

The more robust Poe is captured in a small watercolor by A.C. Smith, one of just three surviving portraits of the author, which will be shown publicly for the first time Saturday and is expected to fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction."

Small photo at the link.

7 comments:

Christopher Corbett said...

Here in Baltimore Poe's legacy remains strange. The exact circumstances of his death are still debated. The latest controversy was whether or not his kin would want his body moved. They decided the other day to leave it buried at Westminster Burying Ground.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-md.ae.poe17jan17,0,1548803.story

Cap'n Bob said...

Many people don't know that he was a West Point graduate. Not something a sickly man could achieve.

mybillcrider said...

I think he got kicked out before graduation.

Cousin Nancy said...

In Edgar's defense, he left West Point mainly because his foster mother died. Edgar was never legally adopted by Mr. Allan, though he used the family name as his middle one. Upon his wife's death, his foster father then was free openly to spend all his money on his illegitimate children (blood being thicker, etc.), and refused to pay any more of Edgar's West Point expenses. THEN Edgar got kicked out. Coulda happened to anybody.

mybillcrider said...

Right. I think he cut chapel, didn't he?

Christopher Corbett said...

Poe was a notorious borrower of money. That was one reason he left West Point. Several of his biographers note that he long wore his cadet's cape.

Cousin Nancy said...

Read somewhere that Poe wrote "as if Christianity never happened." So cutting chapel was the least of it.