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00:00:00It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived, whom
00:00:15you may know, by the name of Annabelle Lee.
00:00:20And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.
00:00:27I was a child, and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea.
00:00:34But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabelle Lee.
00:00:57Edgar Allan Poe, one of America's most influential writers, was born on Thursday, the 19th of
00:01:06January, 1809, in a humble boarding house near Carver Street in Boston, Massachusetts.
00:01:13Both of his parents were actors.
00:01:17While on a business trip to Norfolk, Virginia, Poe's father David saw Eliza Arnold perform
00:01:24on stage, fell in love, and quickly joined her acting troupe.
00:01:28They soon married and would have three children, Henry, born in 1807, Edgar, the middle child,
00:01:35in 1809, and his sister Rosalie, in 1810.
00:01:41His mother, Eliza Poe, played an astonishing 300 roles in her brief career, often to excellent
00:01:48reviews.
00:01:50One critic praised,
00:01:51Her interesting figure, her correct performance, and the accuracy with which she always commits
00:01:58her part, together with her sweetly melodious voice when she charms us with a song.
00:02:04His father, David Poe, was handsome, but not nearly as talented as his wife.
00:02:10He was often pilloried by theater critics.
00:02:13One early review said,
00:02:15The lady was young and pretty, and evinced talent both as singer and actress.
00:02:21The gentleman was literally nothing.
00:02:23Another reviewer complained,
00:02:25Mr. Poe mutilated some of his speeches in a most shameful manner.
00:02:30The young family traveled to theaters along the East Coast, as most American cities were
00:02:37too small to support a permanent acting company.
00:02:40But the Poe's lives soon began to unravel.
00:02:45David Poe's acting career came to a halt with his final stage appearance in October 1809.
00:02:52Two years later, when Edgar was just two years old, David Poe deserted his young family.
00:02:59And vanished.
00:03:01Nothing is known of where he went or what became of him.
00:03:05Five months later, he died in Norfolk, Virginia.
00:03:09Well, David Poe probably had a few different reasons for abandoning his family.
00:03:13First of all, his wife's career, Edgar's mother, was taking off.
00:03:16She was getting better and better parts.
00:03:18Meanwhile, you see David Poe getting fewer and fewer parts and lesser parts.
00:03:23So it might have been a little bit professional jealousy, but also the finances were really crumbling there.
00:03:29He was having trouble supporting his growing family.
00:03:32And about 1809, David Poe wrote a letter that said the worst thing in the world that could have happened to me has just occurred.
00:03:39It's something so awful that he just doesn't want to keep living.
00:03:42He's ready to give up acting altogether.
00:03:44And that thing that had just happened was the birth of little Edgar Poe.
00:03:50Eliza was now in a very vulnerable position, having to raise three young children on her own, constantly moving from one theater to the next in a profession that lacked financial security.
00:04:05Then, tragedy struck.
00:04:07She fell ill with the dreaded disease of the 19th century, tuberculosis, and was left too weak to perform.
00:04:16She gave her final performance in October 1811.
00:04:21The following month, managers of the Richmond Theater organized a benefit performance for Eliza with this urgent appeal in the local newspaper.
00:04:31On this night, Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of disease and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance and asks it for the last time.
00:04:43A week later, lying on her deathbed, she gives Edgar a miniature portrait of herself, several letters, and a painting of Boston Harbor, inscribing on the back,
00:04:56For my little son, Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends.
00:05:09On the 8th of December, Edgar's mother passes away from tuberculosis at just 24 years old.
00:05:18Although she and her husband could not have known it, they die just three days apart.
00:05:24Not yet three years old, Edgar was now an orphan.
00:05:29John and Francis Allen, who had no children of their own, took Edgar into their home in Richmond, Virginia.
00:05:37Poe's foster father, John Allen, was a merchant who traded in tobacco, wheat, and agricultural supplies.
00:05:45He was described as impulsive and quick-tempered, rather rough and uncultured in mind and manner.
00:05:54His wife, Francis, was gentle, but often in poor health.
00:05:59She and her sister, Nancy, who lived with the Allens, lavished attention on Edgar.
00:06:06The Allens gave Edgar Poe his middle name.
00:06:10He would be known to the world as Edgar Allan Poe.
00:06:15Yet, they never formally adopted him.
00:06:18Unlike his sister, Rosalie, who was adopted by the Mackenzie family, Poe was never adopted by the Allens.
00:06:26And although he was relatively unconscious of that fact in his earliest years, as he became older, he came to understand what that meant.
00:06:40It meant that Allen had consciously decided not to give him the Allen name, not to give him any share of whatever fortune Allen would eventually accrue.
00:06:55And the irony for Poe is that Allen did, in fact, by the time Poe was 16, become a very wealthy man.
00:07:03For Poe's entire life, I think this was a sore spot.
00:07:09He wrote many tales in which he imagines the murder of an older man.
00:07:20And I can't help but think that that primal conflict with John Allen is at the very heart of it.
00:07:28Living with the Allens, Edgar's life changed dramatically.
00:07:32He was dressed in fine clothes, taken to fancy resorts, and was described as a, quote,
00:07:39lovely little fellow with dark curls and brilliant eyes, charming everyone by his childish grace, vivacity, and cleverness.
00:07:49He was sent to excellent schools and learned the ways of elegant society.
00:07:55John Allen was said to have alternated in spoiling and scolding him.
00:08:01On the 23rd of June, 1815, just five days after the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo,
00:08:11John Allen and his family embarked on a 34-day ocean voyage to England to open a London branch of his mercantile business, Allen and Ellis.
00:08:24When Edgar was nine, he entered the Reverend Bransby's Manor House Boarding School in the country village of Stoke Newington, about four miles north of London.
00:08:37When later asked about his famous pupil, Bransby declared,
00:08:42I liked the boy.
00:08:44Poor fellow, his parents spoiled him.
00:08:47He was intelligent, wayward, and willful.
00:08:51Edgar later recalled his school days in England as lonely and unhappy.
00:08:57Unfortunately, John Allen's business venture proved a failure.
00:09:02He and his family returned to Richmond in the summer of 1820.
00:09:07Having lived abroad for five years, when Edgar enters the academy run by Joseph Clark, he is more cosmopolitan than his peers.
00:09:17During his three years there, Edgar studies mathematics and learns to read the classic Greek and Roman writers.
00:09:25Clark later recalled,
00:09:27He had a sensitive and tender heart, and would strain every nerve to oblige a friend.
00:09:34At age 14, Edgar enters William Burke School.
00:09:39In those days, such schools were usually private academies, consisting of about 20 male students.
00:09:47There, he studies Greek and Latin, French and Italian, geography and grammar.
00:09:54So, what was Edgar Allan Poe like as a boy?
00:09:58One boyhood friend recalled that Edgar liked practical jokes, masquerades, and raiding orchards.
00:10:07The poets we think of the United States back then were lawyers, or people with family money, or their professors.
00:10:13But Poe's great dream was to be a poet somehow.
00:10:16His hero was a British poet, Lord Byron.
00:10:20The guy dressed all in black, with wild curly black hair, had love affairs all over Europe, and Poe said,
00:10:25I want to be that guy.
00:10:27So, he grew up acting like a young Lord Byron, and sending love poetry to the girls in his sister's school.
00:10:34Apparently, they really liked the poetry until they found he sent everybody the same poem.
00:10:38When 15 years old, he becomes famous for swimming six miles in the James River under a hot summer sun,
00:10:48part of the way against a strong tide.
00:10:51But for years afterwards, Poe was a local legend.
00:10:55And even 10 years after the fact, there was an article about it in the Southern Literary Messenger magazine here in town.
00:11:00And Poe proudly boasted, yeah, that article's about me.
00:11:04I'm the guy who set the record and still holds it.
00:11:07And to this day, Poe still holds a record of swimming against the tides in the James River.
00:11:12As he grows older, Edgar becomes more withdrawn and isolated from his classmates.
00:11:21In his later poem, Alone, Poe expresses how his feelings differed from those of his peers.
00:11:27From childhood's hour, I have not been as others were.
00:11:32I have not seen as others saw.
00:11:36I could not bring my passions from a common spring.
00:11:42From the same source, I have not taken my sorrow.
00:11:47I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone.
00:11:56And all I loved, I loved alone.
00:12:00While at the Burke Academy, Edgar grows very close to Jane Stannard, the warm-hearted, 30-year-old mother of his friend and classmate, Robert.
00:12:13Whenever unhappy or having problems at home, Edgar found great comfort in her company.
00:12:19When the two of them met, there was a kind of immediate connection, almost mystical in the sense that there was something in Poe that yearned for someone like Jane Stannard.
00:12:41And there was really something in Jane Stannard that was very appreciative of this sorrowful, melancholy boy who admired her so much.
00:12:56And I think it was that recognition of what they had in common that led to a really intense and lasting friendship.
00:13:11Lasting in the sense that Poe remembered Jane Stannard his entire life.
00:13:18He was said to have loved her with all the affectionate devotion of a son.
00:13:24However, Jane suffered from what we know today as major depression.
00:13:29Edgar knew her for just one year in Richmond, before she died, around age 31, which greatly affected the young poet, who often visited her grave with her son, Robert.
00:13:43Jane's untimely death made Edgar despondent.
00:13:48When he first met her, he almost fainted right at her feet.
00:13:51The problem was she was his best friend's mother.
00:13:54He was 14.
00:13:55It would have really worked out.
00:13:56But poets like unrequited love.
00:13:58They like to worship somebody from afar.
00:14:01But shortly after they met, she died.
00:14:04He later wrote a famous love lyric about her, called To Helen, changing Jane to the classical figure Helen of Troy, comparing Jane to that ideal.
00:14:17Helen, thy beauty is to me like those Nicene barks of yore, That gently o'er a perfumed sea, The weary way one wanderer bore To his own native shore.
00:14:32On desperate seas long want to roam.
00:14:37Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy niad airs have brought me home, To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome.
00:14:49Lo, in yon brilliant window niche, How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah, Psyche, From the regions which are holy land.
00:15:08Around this time, Edgar falls in love with 15-year-old Elmira Royster, And the two secretly become engaged.
00:15:17She later wrote about his melancholy.
00:15:20He was a beautiful boy.
00:15:22Not very talkative.
00:15:24When he did talk though, he was pleasant.
00:15:27But his general manner was sad.
00:15:30The melancholic young poet began clashing with his quick-tempered foster father,
00:15:36who did not understand him, And grew exasperated, writing in a letter,
00:15:42He does nothing and seems quite miserable, Sulky and ill-tempered to all the family.
00:15:48I have given him a much superior education than ever I received myself.
00:15:54The boy possesses not a spark of affection for us, Not a particle of gratitude for my care and kindness toward him.
00:16:02In February 1826, Edgar enters the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, which had just opened the year before.
00:16:18Thomas Jefferson, the first rector, founded the university, designed its buildings, and planned the curriculum.
00:16:26Every Sunday, he invited students to dine with him at Monticello, and Poe very likely met him on various occasions.
00:16:34Yet, just five months after Poe enters the university, Jefferson dies on the 4th of July, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
00:16:48Jefferson wanted to model the University on principles of the Enlightenment.
00:16:54But in reality, it was a wild place.
00:16:57Fights, drinking, and gambling were rampant, and the college rules were ignored.
00:17:03Between 1825 and 1850, only 10% of its students completed the three years and graduated.
00:17:13Poe registered in the schools of ancient and modern languages, taking classes in Greek and Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian.
00:17:25If you ever felt nervous about taking a final exam, imagine being examined by two former U.S. presidents, including the Father of the Constitution.
00:17:38In December 1826, Poe was examined for three hours by President James Madison, who had succeeded Jefferson as rector, and President James Monroe.
00:17:52Poe earned the highest honors in ancient and modern languages.
00:17:57While he excelled academically, Poe struggled financially.
00:18:01Although his foster father had inherited an enormous fortune from his uncle, making him one of the richest men in Virginia, he gave Poe insufficient funds to meet his expenses.
00:18:15So, Poe turned to gambling to try to meet his costs.
00:18:20The problem was, he was an inept card player.
00:18:24He lost an enormous sum of money, greatly worsening his financial situation.
00:18:31John Allen refused to cover his debts, and in December, Poe was forced to quit the university.
00:18:39Even though he was only there for less than a year, Poe's room at 13 West Range, known as the Raven Room, is preserved to this day.
00:18:50Two centuries later, UVA students cannot reside in Poe's old room, and it looks today much as it did when Poe lived there.
00:19:00When Edgar returned to Richmond, he worked without pay as a clerk in his foster father's counting house.
00:19:09It was there he learned that Elmira Royster, the girl he was secretly engaged to, was now engaged to someone else.
00:19:18Her father had adamantly opposed her engagement with Edgar, and had even intercepted his letters.
00:19:25Poe was miserable.
00:19:28After three months, he could endure it no longer.
00:19:32He decided to leave home and make his own way in the world.
00:19:37He wrote John Allen,
00:19:39Sir, my determination is at length taken, to leave your house and endeavor to find some place in this wide world where I will be treated not as you have treated me.
00:19:52I have heard you say, when you little thought I was listening, and therefore must have said it in earnest, that you had no affection for me.
00:20:02Poe heads to Boston, his late mother's favorite city.
00:20:06Cast out by his family and feeling adrift in the world with few prospects, he enlists for five years in the army as a private under the pseudonym Edgar A. Perry, presumably to dodge creditors.
00:20:23In June 1827, Poe self-publishes his first volume of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems.
00:20:33The work is published anonymously, the author identifying himself only as a Bostonian.
00:20:41But it receives virtually no reviews or attention.
00:20:45Only 50 copies are printed, of which 12 have survived.
00:20:50Amazingly, this 40-page pamphlet, completely ignored when published, has become the most valuable work in American literature.
00:21:02He spends the first six months as a company clerk stationed at Fort Independence on Castle Island in Boston Harbor.
00:21:11By all accounts, he adjusts quite well to military life.
00:21:16After six months, Poe's battery is ordered to Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
00:21:26I think the army looked attractive to him.
00:21:31So he joined the army and he achieved the rank of sergeant major.
00:21:40He was called an artisopher.
00:21:44He was the guy that created the gunpowder for the bombs, for the cannonballs.
00:21:49And that was a very dangerous but very important job because when you would shoot off the cannon towards the enemy,
00:21:58you wanted to make sure the cannonball didn't explode in the cannon or on your side.
00:22:04So he created the gunpowder mixture to make sure that it went where it was supposed to go.
00:22:11A very important job.
00:22:15And he excelled in the army.
00:22:19Sullivan's Island would be the setting for Poe's most popular short story,
00:22:24The Gold Bug, in which a man and his servant hunt for buried treasure.
00:22:30The Gold Bug directly influenced Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island four decades later.
00:22:38Stevenson even credits Poe in his preface.
00:22:42The Gold Bug also popularizes cryptography or secret writing as the character decodes a cipher to locate the treasure.
00:22:54Poe helped popularize the use of cryptograms in fiction.
00:22:58In his story, The Gold Bug, he has the character who finds a piece of parchment with nothing on it.
00:23:05When he holds over a flame and reveals that written in invisible ink, there's a code.
00:23:10When he decodes the message, it gives him a series of clues he has to follow to find a buried treasure.
00:23:16So this is the plot of Da Vinci Code, National Treasure, even The Goonies.
00:23:21It all goes back to The Gold Bug.
00:23:23And it was a huge hit.
00:23:24It was Poe's most popular story during his lifetime, even adapted into a stage play while he is still alive.
00:23:30And people thought he was a genius for creating this new kind of story.
00:23:35Now, cryptograms have been around for a long time, usually used by the military.
00:23:39It was a great way to sneak messages across enemy lines.
00:23:43And remember, Poe was in the military, so this is probably where he learned about cryptology, cryptography.
00:23:50Later in his career, Poe wrote a wildly popular newspaper column asking readers to send ciphers for him to decode.
00:24:00Many readers enthusiastically sent him all kinds of ciphers, which Poe unfailingly solved and published the answers in his column.
00:24:11William Friedman was widely considered the most preeminent cryptologist in U.S. history, who broke the Japanese purple cipher that helped the Allies defeat Japan in World War II.
00:24:26Friedman was introduced to cryptology by reading The Gold Bug as a boy.
00:24:32It is a curious fact that popular interest in this country in the subject of cryptography received its first stimulus from Edgar Allan Poe.
00:24:41Should a psychological test be made, the word cipher would doubtless bring for most laymen the immediate response Poe or The Gold Bug.
00:24:51The fame of Poe rests not a little on his activities with cipher, and much of the esteem in which this American genius is held today rests in part on the legend of Poe the cryptographer.
00:25:04His wife, Elizabeth Smith Friedman, was also a brilliant crypt analyst who successfully deciphered many enemy codes during both world wars, saving countless lives.
00:25:18She is considered one of the greatest crypt analysts in American history.
00:25:27Living on the dreary Sullivan Island for 18 months with poor pay and no chance of advancement to the officer rank, Poe realizes he is at a dead end and attempts to leave the army.
00:25:41He eventually finds a substitute to fulfill his enlistment and leaves the army in April 1829 with an eye toward attending West Point.
00:25:52He decided that the army was not for him, and he did what many people did in that time period.
00:26:00You could buy, you could buy your way out by finding someone who would take your place, and you would pay that person some money to do that.
00:26:11And that's what he did.
00:26:13When Edgar is just 20 years old, his beloved foster mother, Frances Allen, dies at age 44, after a lingering and painful illness.
00:26:28She was the only source of genuine love and affection in his life to that point, and she supported his artistic ambitions.
00:26:40His sorrow for the death of all those who loved him is reflected in his later poem, The Conqueror Worm.
00:26:49Out, out, out of the lights, out all!
00:26:55And over each quivering form, the curtain of funeral Paul comes down with the rush of a storm.
00:27:08When the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm, That the play is the tragedy man, And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
00:27:34When most people think of Edgar Allen Poe, West Point is probably not the first thing that comes to mind.
00:27:41But in June 1830, he arrives in upstate New York at the U.S. Military Academy, which enforced a very strict code of conduct.
00:27:51Cadets were forbidden to, quote, drink, play cards or chess, gamble, use or possess tobacco, read novels, romances or plays, or bathe in the river.
00:28:04The routine was daunting.
00:28:09Awake at sunrise, classes until four, military drills, followed by supper, and then evening classes.
00:28:17Yet Poe excels academically in his chosen fields of French and mathematics.
00:28:23For a while, Edgar thrives under that regime, just as he had under the discipline of Army life.
00:28:30His fellow cadets took delight in his mocking verses about their West Point instructors.
00:28:37In spite of John Allen being one of the richest men in Virginia, thanks mostly to an inheritance, he barely supports Poe while at West Point, making life there even more difficult.
00:28:52As Poe complained in a letter back home,
00:28:55You sent me to West Point like a beggar.
00:28:59The same difficulties are threatening me as before at Charlottesville, and I must resign.
00:29:06More painful was that John Allen remarries, starts another family, and basically shuts Poe out of his life.
00:29:16Feeling disillusioned, Poe decides to leave the academy.
00:29:23He deliberately flouts the rules.
00:29:25He skips classes.
00:29:26He disobeys orders.
00:29:28He fails to participate in the drills.
00:29:31On the 28th of January, a general court-martial is convened.
00:29:36Edgar pleads guilty to all but one charge, and declines to offer any defense.
00:29:43He is found guilty on all charges, and is dismissed from West Point.
00:29:50Poe was a great example of what Charles Baudelaire called the poet modi, the cursed poet.
00:29:58Which Baudelaire regarded as a privileged perspective on society precisely by being cast out, by being the stranger, or by being the man of the crowd.
00:30:13The outsider who has a special insight into a social predicament.
00:30:18And I think that Poe's own experience of really intense rejection and dispossession, in a way, was very important for the kind of poetic and literary perspective that he was so famous for, which is the perspective of the outsider.
00:30:37Set adrift in the world, without direction, without career prospects, without close friends, and shut out by his foster family, Poe decides to relocate to Baltimore.
00:30:51There, where his cousins lived, he would seek a new life for himself.
00:30:56In May 1831, Poe moves to Baltimore, then America's second largest city, to live with his ailing grandmother, Aunt Maria Clem, his cousins Henry and Virginia, and his older brother, also named Henry.
00:31:21His brother was an amateur sailor, and by age 20, had sailed the world on the USS Macedonian.
00:31:31He was said to have shared Edgar's dreamy romanticism, morbid melancholy, and weakness for liquor.
00:31:40A published poet and author, he may have inspired Edgar to take up writing tales.
00:31:47For a time, Edgar used the alias, Henry LeRenee, a name inspired by Henry.
00:31:54Sadly, just three months after Edgar moves to Baltimore, Henry, who had been ill for some time, dies from tuberculosis at 24, the same age as their mother.
00:32:10He is buried under this bush in an unmarked grave in the family plot.
00:32:19Around 1833, the family moves here to 3 Amity Street, a very modest two-story row house in what was then the countryside.
00:32:31The grandmother, who was bedridden, supported the household through her pension, while her daughter, Mariah Clem, brought in funds through dressmaking.
00:32:41But money was very tight. It was not an easy existence.
00:32:46In those days, people could go to jail for being excessively in debt.
00:32:53In 1832, half the prisoners in Baltimore City Jail were insolvent debtors.
00:33:01Edgar tried to find a teaching position, but to no avail.
00:33:05He wrote his foster father,
00:33:08I am perishing, absolutely perishing for want of aid.
00:33:14And yet I am not idle, nor addicted to any vice, nor have I committed any offense against society which would render me deserving of so hard a fate.
00:33:27For God's sake, pity me and save me from destruction.
00:33:32Mariah Clem, a widow, was an energetic and kindly woman who was completely devoted to Edgar.
00:33:41And this would remain so throughout his life.
00:33:45She believed in his genius and made significant sacrifices on his behalf.
00:33:51She, in effect, adopted Edgar as her own, acknowledging that he had become
00:33:57Indeed, a son to me and has always been so.
00:34:02So Maria Clem, for example, apparently was a very loving woman.
00:34:09I mean, she would take anyone into the household and she did.
00:34:12She took Edgar into the household.
00:34:14And she raised, I shouldn't say raised because he was basically an adult, but she treated him like her own son.
00:34:22And they became very close.
00:34:25He called her Muddy as a nickname.
00:34:28And she called him Eddie.
00:34:30And they were a very tight knit family.
00:34:34And she supported him and did what she could to keep him happy, to promote him and to do everything she could to encourage his writing.
00:34:52Edgar also grew especially close to Virginia, his first cousin, and served as her tutor.
00:35:00When Poe moves into this household, Mariah Clem's household in Baltimore, and he meets Virginia, they soon become very fond of one another.
00:35:08And this really is the first time that Poe really has a place because he's orphaned at a very young age.
00:35:15His mother, Eliza Poe dies.
00:35:17He's taken in by the Allens, but he doesn't fit into that world.
00:35:20But this world he does fit into.
00:35:22And so the three of them, Virginia Poe, Mariah Clem, and Edgar Allan Poe, kind of form this cohesive unit where he is at his happiest.
00:35:31It is in Baltimore that Poe launches his career as an imaginative short story writer, writing tales such as Morella, The Assignation, Berenice, and his first science fiction story, The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfau.
00:35:51But what made Poe turn to short story writing?
00:35:56He may have been partly inspired by his older brother Henry's works.
00:36:01And Poe had a keen understanding of what the public wanted.
00:36:05Rising literacy rates, urbanization, and technological advances in printing presses increased the public's appetite for stories.
00:36:15So Poe lives in this transition time between the kind of the waning of the old rural America and the dawning of modern capitalistic commercial America.
00:36:24And just like in Europe during Gutenberg's time when the printing presses invented, you have this kind of explosion of periodicals.
00:36:34Edgar's room was likely on the top floor.
00:36:37Edgar's room was likely on the top floor.
00:36:38This was where he wrote some of his earliest short stories, including MS Found in a Bottle, that is, Manuscript Found in a Bottle, that wins a $50 prize in a literary contest given by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor.
00:36:55Published in 1833, this story launches Poe's literary career.
00:37:01The award also offers Poe much needed validation that he had talent and could devote his life to his craft.
00:37:10You know, for someone who is struggling and wondering, what am I doing? Poetry, short stories.
00:37:15And to win such a prestigious award, he must have thought, this is it. This is what I want to do.
00:37:22And, and yes, he probably thought, I am a good writer. And this prize proves it. Here are these, these reputable judges, you know, telling me that you won the best story.
00:37:38MS Found in a Bottle is a shipwreck story that begins,
00:37:43Of my country and my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one and estranged me from the other.
00:37:53Estranged from family and country, the unnamed narrator embarks as a passenger on a cargo ship from Batavia, now Jakarta, Indonesia.
00:38:07Days into the voyage, the ship is hit by a violent storm that capsizes the vessel and throws everyone overboard, except the narrator and an old Swede.
00:38:18In the next instant, a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam ends, and rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stern to stern.
00:38:29By what miracle I escaped destruction, it is impossible to say.
00:38:34After a while, I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port.
00:38:41We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident.
00:38:46Driven south by the storm, the narrator ship collides with a gigantic black galleon, and the narrator is thrown on to its rigging.
00:38:56Once aboard, he hides, but soon discovers the aged crew is unable to see him.
00:39:04They all bore about them the marks of hoary old age. Their voices were low, tremulous, and broken.
00:39:12Their eyes glistened with the room of years, and their gray hair streamed terribly in the tempest.
00:39:19The ship drifts toward Antarctica, where it becomes caught in a vast whirlpool and goes down.
00:39:28In March 1834, Edgar's foster father passes away in Richmond, a very wealthy man.
00:39:35He owned eight houses, with shares in gold mines and banks.
00:39:40But Edgar does not receive one cent.
00:39:45The following year, Poe's luck finally turns.
00:39:49Through a mutual friend, he is introduced to Thomas Willis White, the owner and editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, a monthly magazine published in Richmond.
00:40:01Poe soon submits short stories, poems, and reviews that White publishes in The Messenger.
00:40:10White is somewhat taken aback by the bizarre nature of some of Poe's tales.
00:40:16Edgar writes him,
00:40:18But whether the articles of which I speak are, or are not, in bad taste, is little to the purpose.
00:40:25To be appreciated, you must be read.
00:40:28And these things are invariably sought after, with avidity.
00:40:33White is impressed with Poe's writing and advice as to how to grow the magazine, and offers him a position.
00:40:42In early August 1835, Poe decamps to Richmond to launch a new chapter in his literary career.
00:40:52Poe returns to Richmond to work on the Southern Literary Messenger.
00:41:05He proofreads articles, manages the correspondence, and writes the critical notes, all for a modest $15 per week.
00:41:14He soon becomes lonely in Richmond.
00:41:18Separated from Mariah Clem and her daughter Virginia, he receives word that his wealthy cousin, Nielsen Poe, invited Virginia to live with him and his family.
00:41:29Nielsen offered to educate Virginia, give her a comfortable life, and be her guardian.
00:41:35He writes a deeply personal letter, imploring them to rebuff Nielsen's offer.
00:41:44My dearest auntie, I am blinded with tears while writing this letter.
00:41:50I have no wish to live another hour.
00:41:55Amid sorrow and the deepest anxiety your letter reached.
00:42:00And you well know how little I am able to bear up under the pressure of grief.
00:42:08My last, my only hold on life is cruelly torn away.
00:42:15I have no desire to live and will not.
00:42:20I love, you know I love Virginia passionately, devotedly.
00:42:28I cannot express in words the fervent devotion I feel towards my dear little cousin, my own darling.
00:42:39It is useless to disguise the truth that when Virginia goes with Nielsen Poe, that I shall never behold her again.
00:42:50That is absolutely sure.
00:42:53Pity me, my dear auntie, pity me.
00:42:57I have no one now to fly to.
00:43:00I am among strangers, and my wretchedness is more than I can bear.
00:43:07For Virginia, my love, my own sweetest sissy, my darling little wifey.
00:43:18Think well before you break the heart of your cousin Eddie.
00:43:24Moved by his pleas, the Clem sacrificed material prospects and soon moved to Richmond.
00:43:31In the fall of 1835, Edgar, Maria, and Virginia lived together in a boarding house on Capitol Square.
00:43:39In December, Poe becomes editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.
00:43:46If Baltimore was where Poe became a short story writer, Richmond was where he became a magazine editor and critic.
00:43:55He soon achieves fame, or infamy, for his cutting but insightful literary reviews.
00:44:03Most critics in Poe's day engaged in what was called puffing.
00:44:08They would lavish praise on mediocre literary works when they hardly deserved it.
00:44:14Part of the reason was to establish America, not just Europe, as a home of great writers.
00:44:23But Poe refused to go along.
00:44:25He announced it his mission to reform the national habit of coddling mediocre American writers.
00:44:32In fact, we are now strong enough in our own resources.
00:44:37We have at length arrived at that epoch when our literature may and must stand on its own merits.
00:44:45Or fall through its own defects.
00:44:48Poe was fundamentally and temperamentally against the practice of puffing.
00:44:55He was critical of those who puffed so flagrantly and made fun of them in many ways.
00:45:07And I think, yes, indeed, he went out of his way to make the case that if American literature was going to attain any respectability in the world,
00:45:22Americans had to establish some critical standards, and that puffery was the antithesis of that.
00:45:32And he didn't mince his words.
00:45:35Writing his reviews on this desk, he called the work ups and downs a public imposition.
00:45:43It should have been printed among the quack advertisements.
00:45:48About the novel The Swiss Harris, Poe declared it
00:45:52should be read by all who have nothing better to do.
00:45:56He wrote of the work Paul Urich.
00:45:59Such are the works which bring daily discredit upon our national literature.
00:46:04More outspoken and honest, and some would say reckless, than any other critic,
00:46:13he soon earns the nickname The Tomahawk Man for his biting reviews.
00:46:19But there were two writers who Poe consistently praised.
00:46:23Alfred Lord Tennyson, whom he called a magnificent genius, and Samuel Coolerich.
00:46:31While working for The Messenger, Poe publishes 37 reviews of American and foreign books and periodicals,
00:46:39establishing his place as a premier critic in the United States.
00:46:48Back home, Edgar grew closer to Virginia, an attractive girl with a very sweet and gentle disposition.
00:46:56One friend noted,
00:46:59He devoted a large part of his salary to Virginia's education,
00:47:03and she was instructed in every elegant accomplishment at his expense.
00:47:08He himself became her tutor at another time.
00:47:11I remember once finding him engaged on a certain Sunday in giving Virginia lessons in algebra.
00:47:18Everyone who saw her was won by her.
00:47:21Poe was very proud and very fond of her,
00:47:25and used to delight in the round, childlike face and plump little figure.
00:47:30And she in turn idolized him.
00:47:32She had a voice of wonderful sweetness, and was an exquisite singer.
00:47:37And in some of their more prosperous days, she had her harp and piano.
00:47:41At home, the character of Edgar Poe appeared in his most beautiful light, playful, affectionate, witty,
00:47:50for all who came, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention.
00:47:57And they would say they never saw so much love in that small household between Edgar and Virginia.
00:48:06He would dote on her, she would dote on him, and so much love in that household.
00:48:14And there's no doubt in anyone's mind that they were truly devoted to each other.
00:48:20On the 16th of May, 1836, the 27-year-old Poe married his cousin Virginia in a simple ceremony at their boarding house.
00:48:33Virginia was only 13 years old, but was presented as 21 on their marriage certificate.
00:48:41The couple spend their honeymoon in Petersburg, Virginia, staying on the second floor of this house.
00:48:49His nickname for her was Sissy. He thought of her like a little kid's sister.
00:48:54There's one letter he writes for calls her, my little sissy, my darling cousin, and my little wifey.
00:48:59So at first, it probably was a platonic marriage.
00:49:04It was maybe a marriage out of convenience, maybe something that the mother-in-law had something to do with her aging.
00:49:09Although he genuinely adored her, maybe at first as a kid's sister.
00:49:15And when she did get older, he made sure that she had piano instructors, even a harp instructor, made sure that she had tutors.
00:49:23She apparently was very excellent at speaking Italian.
00:49:25So it seems like a seemingly happy home life, even though they always struggle with poverty.
00:49:32Poe had a penchant for self-destruction, which soon began to emerge.
00:49:45He would strive intensely for a desired goal.
00:49:48And just when it was in reach, he would destroy his own chance of achieving it,
00:49:54often through self-destructive drinking or turning friends into enemies.
00:50:00It's a terrifically revealing motif in Poe because it's fundamentally rooted in his own life experience of being an orphan,
00:50:14of having the experience of being rejected or abandoned by a parent,
00:50:23and then going through the process again with John Allen being pushed away, refused a place in the family.
00:50:33And I think for Poe, this kind of, and for really any young person who experiences similar kinds of loss and abandonment,
00:50:46this can very easily create feelings of worthlessness, of self-hatred.
00:50:55This impulse for self-sabotage was present throughout Poe's life and is a theme in several of his short stories.
00:51:06In a story titled Imp of the Perverse, Poe tackles this theme head on.
00:51:13We stand upon the brink of a precipice.
00:51:17We peer into the abyss.
00:51:20We grow sick and dizzy.
00:51:23Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.
00:51:28Unaccountably, we remain.
00:51:31A thought, one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror.
00:51:40It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height.
00:51:49Examine these similar actions.
00:51:52We shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the perverse.
00:51:57We perpetuate them merely because we feel that we should not.
00:52:04In the story The Black Cat, the narrator also experiences the Imp of the Perverse.
00:52:12Pluto, this was the cat's name, was my favorite pet and playmate.
00:52:17I alone fed him and he attended me whenever I went about the house.
00:52:23It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.
00:52:30Our friendship lasted in this manner for several years, during which my general temperament and character, through the instrumentality of the fiend and temperance, had, I blush to confess it, experienced a radical alteration for the worse.
00:52:46I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others.
00:52:57And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness.
00:53:04Of this spirit philosophy takes no account, yet I am not more sure that my soul lives than
00:53:12I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.
00:53:17Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?
00:53:28This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow.
00:53:33One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree, hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes and with the bitterest remorse at my heart.
00:53:48I think Poe in the 1830s is already doing what would take much, much longer to be recognized as stream of consciousness writing in the 20th century with Joyce or Wolf or even back in the late 19th century with Dostoevsky.
00:54:05Poe is a very important kind of under-acknowledged precursor for all of this experimentation where mental associations themselves become the object of representation in a way.
00:54:21So a lot of his crazy narrators who are so swept up in their own kind of mental preoccupations, artistically, that was very experimental for Poe to be focusing on.
00:54:35Perhaps weighed down by heavy financial burdens and an overbearing owner, Poe's own imp of the perverse emerges and he begins to self-destructively drink.
00:54:49Well, Poe had an extreme end times of alcohol. They say that after a glass of wine, he gets staggering drunk.
00:54:54It seems to be a hereditary problem because his sister, they say after just a thimble full of whiskey, she was staggering drunk, be sick for days afterwards.
00:55:02The Poe family seems to have had some kind of hereditary intolerance of alcohol, which they describe as a family curse.
00:55:11They didn't really have a word for alcoholism back then, really understand the concept.
00:55:16But Poe's friends said that, sure, if he'd go to a party, he'd try to avoid the alcohol.
00:55:21He just had a single drink. He became a completely different person.
00:55:25He'd embarrass himself, he'd alienate friends, and then he'd be just sick for days afterwards.
00:55:32So, Poe stayed away from alcohol for months at his time.
00:55:36His employers, his wife and mother-in-law all encouraged him to stay away from drinking because that's when he was productive.
00:55:43When he was clean and sober, he was able to write thousands of words.
00:55:47But when he had something to drink, he was bedridden.
00:55:51As Poe begins drinking again, many arguments ensue with his boss.
00:55:56White soon dismisses him from the messenger.
00:56:00Poe likely had mixed feelings leaving the magazine.
00:56:05He resolved to make a brand new start of it in the upcoming year.
00:56:10He would move his family to the largest city in America.
00:56:15In early 1837, Poe moves his family to New York, where they take up quarters near Washington Square.
00:56:31But their timing could not be worse.
00:56:34In May, as Queen Victoria ascends to the throne in England, the Great Panic of 1837 begins,
00:56:43leading to one of the worst depressions in American history.
00:56:47Work was very difficult to find.
00:56:50The family had to survive on Poe's occasional publications and taking in boarders.
00:56:57The family was destitute, often living on bread and molasses for weeks at a time.
00:57:04Yet, they seemed happy to outsiders, as they were a very close-knit trio.
00:57:11It was at this time Edgar falls ill and is treated at the nearby Northern Dispensary on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village.
00:57:22The building still stands today.
00:57:25While in New York, Poe completes his only finished novel,
00:57:30the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, about a young man who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus.
00:57:41He experiences myriad adventures and misadventures, mutiny, shipwreck, and cannibalism among them,
00:57:49before the crew of another ship rescues him.
00:57:53It's a very interesting tale. It's inspired by Poe's brother, Henry, who had been a sailor and had traveled, kind of traveled the world.
00:58:02And Poe's, Henry's story has kind of inspired this, and Poe's own, of course, creative genius.
00:58:10Starting out as a somewhat conventional adventure at sea, the novel becomes increasingly strange and difficult to classify,
00:58:20with one critic calling it, quote,
00:58:22one of the most elusive major texts of American literature.
00:58:27The novel addresses one of Poe's recurring themes, man's unconscious desire for destruction.
00:58:37To lend authenticity to this tale, Poe draws from contemporary travel journals and real-life accounts of sea voyages,
00:58:46as well as his own experiences at sea.
00:58:49Critics generally disliked the work, finding it disjointed.
00:58:54Poe himself later disavowed it, calling it a very silly book.
00:58:59Still, the novel has made somewhat of a comeback.
00:59:03In 2013, the UK Guardian cited it as the 10th best novel written in English.
00:59:11The novel later influenced Herman Melville's wailing epic, Moby Dick.
00:59:17I agree with Melville that failures can be great works of art.
00:59:24And I think in this narrative, Poe achieved more than he expected to.
00:59:32And the effects that he creates continue to entice us into this very tangled narrative that seems to operate on so many different levels.
00:59:49Unfortunately, economic conditions do not improve.
00:59:54And in the summer of 1838, Poe is forced to move his family to Philadelphia, then the publishing capital of the country, to seek better opportunities.
01:00:07It is here that he will enter the most productive and brilliant period of his literary career.
01:00:15After moving to Philadelphia, Poe finds work as an assistant editor with Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.
01:00:30William Burton was an actor, often away on tour, and needed someone to run the magazine he owned.
01:00:37Burton offers to pay Poe a woeful $10 per week for what he claims will be two hours of work per day.
01:00:45Of course, the actual editorial job takes far longer, and Poe is exploited.
01:00:52Burton also disapproves of Poe's biting literary views and does not permit him to edit the magazine.
01:01:01Needless to say, Poe is quite unhappy with the arrangement.
01:01:06It is during this time that he pens one of his most mysterious and brilliant short stories, The Fall of the House of Usher.
01:01:17The tale opens with the narrator approaching the House of Usher on horseback, feeling the weight of the mansion's gloominess.
01:01:26During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone on horseback through a singularly dreary tract of country,
01:01:39and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy house of Usher.
01:01:46I know not how it was, but with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
01:01:55One theme the story explores is how the fate of the crumbling mansion, with its eye-like windows and dour landscape, is intertwined with the two troubled proprietors residing in it.
01:02:11The narrator had recently received a letter from his friend Roderick Usher, complaining of an illness, and finds him in an oppressed state.
01:02:23I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow, an air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
01:02:33He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone and durable.
01:02:40The odors of all flowers were oppressive. His eyes were tortured by even a faint light.
01:02:47And there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
01:02:55To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.
01:02:59I shall perish, said he. I must perish in this deplorable folly.
01:03:06As depicted in a 1928 avant-garde silent film, Roderick believes it is the family mansion that is the main cause of his malady, and that of his twin sister, and only companion, Lady Madeline, who is also gravely ill.
01:03:26He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth.
01:03:36An influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion obtained over his spirit, an effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down had at length brought about upon the morale of his existence.
01:03:57The narrator tries to lift his friend's morale by listening to improvised musical compositions on the guitar, but Roderick reveals that he believes the family mansion to be alive, and their fates tragically intertwined.
01:04:16The belief, however, was connected, with the grey stones of the home of his forefathers.
01:04:22The evidence of the sentience was to be seen, he said, in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls.
01:04:32The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him, what he was.
01:04:47When Roderick and his sister perish, this also brings about the mansion's destruction, as if their fates are bound together.
01:04:57From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath. There came a fierce breath of the whirlwind. The entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight.
01:05:11My brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder. There was a long, tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters. And the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher.
01:05:29Well, the fall of the House of Usher is a tour de force of Poe's ideas of unity of effect. And it's also a mirror image in itself. The whole story is about mirroring.
01:05:41And Poe wrote it in what's called a chiastic pattern. The beginning and the end reflect each other. Even the internal parts reflect each other. So, for instance, the beginning of the story starts out as they're approaching the House of Usher.
01:05:57They see its reflection in the Tarn. So, the house itself is reflected. The story ends with them leaving the House of Usher and looking at it as it collapses into the Tarn.
01:06:09So, begins and ends at exactly the same place. But also within the story, we meet Madeline and Roderick Usher, who are twins. They live in a house with two eye-like windows, copies of each other. The house itself copied it in its reflection.
01:06:26So, it's all about mirroring. It's all about doubles. Are these actually twins? Or are they mirrors of the same person, the same personality?
01:06:36Another major theme in Poe's work is buried secrets do not stay buried. Hidden secrets erupting to the surface is the theme of the Tell-Tale Heart, also written in Philadelphia.
01:06:52The story begins with the narrator revealing his madness as he attempts to deny it.
01:06:58True. Nervous. Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am.
01:07:04But why will you say that I am mad?
01:07:07The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them.
01:07:13Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
01:07:16The mad narrator describes his obsession in killing the old man, as conveyed in this 1928 experimental silent film.
01:07:26It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
01:07:35I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire.
01:07:43I think it was his eye. Yes, it was this. He had the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it.
01:07:55Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
01:08:07The narrator describes how he murders and buries the old man under the floorboards.
01:08:14But when police officers arrive to search his home, he cannot hide his crime.
01:08:20So tormented is he by the increasingly loud sounds in his ears of a beating heart.
01:08:26No doubt now I grew very pale, but I talked more fluently and with a heightened voice.
01:08:33Yet the sound increased. And what could I do?
01:08:38It was a low, dull, quick sound.
01:08:41Much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.
01:08:45I gasped for breath.
01:08:47But the noise steadily increased.
01:08:50I arose and argued about trifles in a high key with violent gesticulations.
01:08:55But the noise steadily increased.
01:08:58Why would they not be gone?
01:09:01Oh, God, what could I do?
01:09:04I phoned.
01:09:05I raved.
01:09:07I swore.
01:09:09Villains, I shrieked.
01:09:11Dissemble no more.
01:09:13I admit the deed.
01:09:14Tear up the planks.
01:09:16Here, here.
01:09:17It is the beating of his hideous heart.
01:09:20Poe's narrator may be showing us a certain situation or scenario, but the real subject
01:09:29of the tale, in a way, is the narrator's perspective itself.
01:09:34So that focus on the narrator's perspective or point of view will go into, in the 20th
01:09:41century, stream-of-consciousness writers like Joyce, where the thought process is the interesting
01:09:46thing.
01:09:48The Telltale Heart was one of the most extraordinary stories that Poe ever wrote.
01:09:53And it really sets him apart in many ways.
01:09:58It was not the first story in which Poe used an unreliable narrator, but it's probably the
01:10:07most spectacular, if we think about the way that horror stories now are related through
01:10:15cameras and film.
01:10:18It's a story that's told from the point of view of the killer.
01:10:21And we see, closing in on the victim, the viewer is seen from the killer's perspective.
01:10:37Although mainly remembered as an author and poet, Poe was also a highly influential critic.
01:10:45He was the first American writer to produce important literary criticism.
01:10:53His literary theories on what makes the short story, or prose tale, effective and powerful
01:11:01help shape the conventions of the emerging genre.
01:11:06The most important of these theories was what he called unity of effect.
01:11:13So the unity of effect is drawn from Poe's work, The Philosophy of Composition, where he
01:11:18says that all the components in a story should lead into this one effect, whether it's melancholy
01:11:24in his poems or horror in his stories.
01:11:28But this unity of effect can only be achieved if the work can be read in one sitting, or else
01:11:35the effect is lost.
01:11:36In the brief tale, the author is enabled to carry out the fullness of his intention, be
01:11:42what it may.
01:11:43During the hour of perusal, the soul of the reader is at the writer's control.
01:11:49And he emphasized the importance of the opening sentence and every word in the tale in contributing
01:12:03to the unity of effect.
01:12:05If his very initial sentence tend not to the upbringing of this effect, then he has failed
01:12:13in his first step.
01:12:14In the whole composition, there should be no word written, of which the tendency is not
01:12:21to the one pre-established design.
01:12:24And by such means, with care and skill, a picture is at length painted, which leaves in
01:12:30the mind of him, who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.
01:12:37In his renowned critical essay, The Philosophy of Composition, Poe reveals that he begins
01:12:45with the consideration of an effect.
01:12:49Keeping originality always in view, I say to myself in the first place, of the innumerable
01:12:56effects or impressions of which the heart, the intellect, or the soul is susceptible, what
01:13:04one shall I, on the present occasion, select?
01:13:08Once selected, the intended effect influences not only the story's plot, but also its tone
01:13:15and mood.
01:13:16In fact, Poe suggested authors not put pen to paper until the overall effect is determined.
01:13:24There are so many writers today who have been influenced by Poe, directly or indirectly,
01:13:36that it's almost hard to see how pervasive that impact has been.
01:13:41But Poe was one of the first to recognize that, from a technical perspective, a great short
01:13:49story is harder to write than a great novel, because the lines on the court are much tighter.
01:13:58You have to be very precise.
01:14:00You have to know exactly what you're doing from the get-go.
01:14:04Whereas as Poe knew from writing Arthur Gordon Pym, you kind of figure it out as you go.
01:14:10Meanwhile, things were going poorly at Burton's magazine.
01:14:15Poe was understandably resentful that, although the magazine was bringing in $4,000 a year, he
01:14:22earned but a small fraction of it, despite doing most of the work.
01:14:28Even worse, he felt Burton mistreated him.
01:14:32Poe's lifelong ambition, which he had since his days in Baltimore years before, was to
01:14:40establish his own literary magazine that would publish outstanding literature and raise the
01:14:48literary standards in America.
01:14:51He also craved the freedom to speak his mind and gain financial security.
01:14:58Sensing an opportunity, Poe draws up a prospectus for his proposed pen magazine to attract financial
01:15:06backers.
01:15:07But when Burton finds out, he fires Poe on the spot.
01:15:13Unfortunately, Poe falls very ill during this time.
01:15:17He cannot find financial backers, and is forced to put his dream on hold.
01:15:27Around the time William Henry Harrison is inaugurated as President of the United States in 1841, Poe
01:15:35begins work as editor of Graham's magazine, owned by the Philadelphia lawyer and publisher,
01:15:42George Graham.
01:15:45While Harrison is only president for 30 days before succumbing to pneumonia, Poe's employment
01:15:51at Graham's magazine lasts a little longer.
01:15:56He receives $800 per year and enjoys far better working conditions.
01:16:03It was at this time that Poe writes a story that changes the history of world literature.
01:16:11A story whose impact is still widely felt in novels, movies, and television to this day.
01:16:19In the April 1841 issue of Graham's magazine, appeared Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, inaugurating
01:16:36one of the most popular genres ever conceived, the detective story.
01:16:42The word detective did not yet exist in English, so Poe called these stories tales of radiocination.
01:16:51Nothing like this had ever been written before in literature.
01:16:55The first thing he did was publish The Murders in the Rue Morgue, a new kind of story about
01:17:02a character who solves impossible crimes.
01:17:05In this case, two women who have been murdered inside a locked room that's still locked from
01:17:09the inside when the door is broken down.
01:17:13No murderer is there.
01:17:14How could he have murdered both these women in such a brutal fashion as to shove one of them
01:17:18up the chimney, and nobody's seen him?
01:17:22Is it supernatural?
01:17:23Was it a ghost?
01:17:24Well, Poe has a character, a private investigator, Auguste Dupin, who's able to solve the crime
01:17:31using reason and analysis, studying the crime scene, profiling the suspect.
01:17:38And this became the first detective story.
01:17:41A whole new literary genre.
01:17:43Poe became the first American to invent a new literary genre.
01:17:47Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18, I there became acquainted
01:17:53with Monsieur C.
01:17:54Auguste Dupin.
01:17:56Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Monmartre, where the accident of
01:18:02our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume brought us into
01:18:08closer communion.
01:18:10We saw each other again and again.
01:18:13I was astonished, at the vast extent of his reading, and above all I felt my soul enkindled
01:18:20within me by the wild fervor and the vivid freshness of his imagination.
01:18:26It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city.
01:18:32Our seclusion was perfect.
01:18:34We admitted no visitors.
01:18:36Indeed, the locality of our retirement had been kept a secret from my own former associates,
01:18:42and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris.
01:18:48We existed within ourselves alone.
01:18:52Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm continuing the topics of the day, or roaming
01:18:58far and wide until a late hour seeking amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous
01:19:04city that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.
01:19:13Their seclusion is broken when they read a newspaper account of a baffling double murder.
01:19:19A mother and daughter have been found dead at their residence in the rue morgue.
01:19:26The mother was found with broken bones and her throat deeply cut, while the daughter was
01:19:32found strangled to death and stuffed upside down in a chimney.
01:19:37The murders occurred in a fourth floor apartment that was locked from the inside.
01:19:42With Dupin and the narrator, the women lived in an extremely retired life, seeing almost no
01:19:49one.
01:19:50Several witnesses reported hearing two voices at the time of the murder.
01:19:55Their first voice spoke French, but they could not identify the language of the second shrill
01:20:02voice.
01:20:03The police are mystified.
01:20:06After visiting the crime scene, Dupin ingeniously deduces how the two women were killed.
01:20:14Poe's story establishes certain attributes of the detective genre that many authors later
01:20:20follow, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie with Hercule
01:20:27Perrault.
01:20:29The detective as a detached, gentlemanly amateur not associated with the police.
01:20:36The use of first-person narrator who is a friend of the detective, such as Dr. Watson
01:20:41for Sherlock Holmes or Archie Goodwin for Nero Wolfe.
01:20:46The opening intrusion of the outside world on the detective's bachelor office or quarters,
01:20:53such as 221B Baker Street in London.
01:20:58And using the powers of reason, the detective revealing how the crime was committed.
01:21:05So indebted to Poe was Conan Doyle that he wrote,
01:21:08Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?
01:21:15Doyle also called Poe's detective stories a model for all time.
01:21:21In fact, in Doyle's very first novel, A Study in Scarlet, Watson remarks to Sherlock Holmes...
01:21:28You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin.
01:21:32I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.
01:21:37But what may account for the detective novel being conceived at this particular time?
01:21:43It's a confluence or a convergence of cultural factors.
01:21:48One of them is the growth of cities, the creation of urban cultures, the fascination with urban types.
01:21:57Baudelaire became fascinated with the flaneur, the city walker, somebody who studies people in the streets.
01:22:06This is also historically the time at which many of the great cities of the world began to found police forces.
01:22:15Poe soon wrote a sequel, The Mystery of Marie Roget, in which C. Auguste Dupin returns to solve the murder of a Parisian girl whose body was found floating in the Seine.
01:22:28He closely based this tale on a real-life sensational case of the time, the slaying of Mary Rogers, a beautiful 20-year-old cigar girl in New York whose body was found floating in the Hudson River.
01:22:44Although not as well received, this was the first detective story based on a real true crime.
01:22:50Many television series, including the long-running program Law & Order, with its adapted-from-the-headlines format, follow in the tradition pioneered by Poe.
01:23:03Poe considered his third and final tale of radiocination, the purloined letter, to be his best.
01:23:12In this story, the detective C. Auguste Dupin and the narrator are secluded in their Parisian quarters discussing famous cases when a prefect of the police visits.
01:23:25He requests their assistance in recovering a letter from the French queen, stolen by one of her ministers.
01:23:33The police cannot locate the stolen letter that contains information damaging to her reputation.
01:23:41But Dupin ingeniously solves the case, discovering the stolen letter hiding in plain sight at the minister's residence.
01:23:51In this story, Dupin smokes a pipe, an attribute that Conan Doyle adopts for Sherlock Holmes.
01:23:58And Poe develops the rapport between Dupin and his friend that would be echoed in many detective partnerships through the years.
01:24:07With these three tales of radiocination, Poe firmly establishes the conventions of the detective story.
01:24:17Although he could not have known it at the time, his place in literary history was assured.
01:24:27At home, Poe tutored Virginia in languages and algebra and provided her a harp and piano.
01:24:34He often encouraged her to sing, which she loved to do.
01:24:39Visitors observed that she was an excellent singer.
01:24:43Poe had reached the peak of his literary powers.
01:24:47He made many friends in Philadelphia and participated in prominent literary salons.
01:24:53He also found refuge in a happy home life and great joy with Virginia.
01:25:01Yet life as he knew it was about to radically change.
01:25:05The
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