“Words have
no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809 - 1849)Curious facts about:
Poe is regarded
as the “father of the modern literary detective” after he created Le Chevalier
C Auguste Dupin as the protagonist for The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841. This book is
widely considered to be the first detective-fiction story, and Poe brought back
Dupin for two further works – The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1842) and The
Purloined Letter (1844). Poe terms Dupin’s investigative talent as
“ratiocination” – rational and exact reasoning – and this work helped to lay
the foundations for the modern-day detective genre of literature.
He loved Cats.
Really. Contrary to the famous and nasty depiction of a man gouging the eye of
a poor feline in “The Black Cat,” Poe adored animals. His own kitty’s name was
Catterina. After hearing of Poe’s death, his mother-in-law discovered that his
beloved tortoiseshell cat Catterina had also just died.
Poe was athletic
and handsome, as well as mysterious and brooding. He held a record for swimming
six miles up the tidal James River in Virginia, and he enjoyed rowing around
Turtle Bay in New York City and hiking through the countryside. He was also a
champion long jumper.
In the 1860s,
the medium Lizzie Doten published some poetry she claimed had been dictated to
her by Poe’s ghost. His fiancée Sarah Helen Whitman (after his first wife’s
death but before his engagement to Elmira Shelton) hired a medium to move in
with her because she thought Poe’s spirit was trying to communicate with her,
too.