Nevermore:
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New York Daily Tribune. Tuesday Morning, October 9, 1849. [zoom] | Additional images: The contents of this obituary came largely from R. W. Griswold’s book The Poets and Poetry of America. “EDGAR A. POE is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England, and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars.” |
Fragment of Edgar Allan Poe’s Coffin. Framed with a portrait and an autograph note in Poe’s hand. [zoom] | Additional images: This coffin fragment was obtained when Poe’s body was relocated from the Poe family plot to a new marble monument in the burial yard of Westminster Church. An article in the October 1, 1875 Baltimore Evening News described the process as well as the apparent origin of the fragment: “On carefully raising the coffin to the brink of the grave Mr. Tuder discovered that it was partially broken in at the sides, and the lid near the head was so much decayed that it fell in pieces on the ground. The flesh and funeral robes of course had crumbled into dust and there was nothing left but the bare bones and a few clumps of hair attached to the skull, to tell that a body had once been there.” The unrelated note framed with the coffin fragment, dated April 30 1845, New York, acknowledges the receipt of five dollars regarding the Southern Literary Messenger, the Richmond literary magazine Poe edited in the 1830s. |
John H. Hewitt. Shadows on the Wall, or Glimpses of the Past Fifty Years. Sketches of Noted Persons Met with by the Author. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1877. [zoom]| Additional images: This volume of reminiscences contains two essays on Poe, along with Hewitt’s poem “At the Grave of Edgar A. Poe.” Hewitt is best remembered today as a figure in one of Poe’s first literary controversies, the Baltimore Saturday Visiter affair. In this volume Hewitt recounts his version of the episode and reprints both his and Poe’s poems. |
View a photo of this exhibition case |