Edgar Allan Poe in popular culture

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This article is about Edgar Allan Poe's appearances as a character. For the use of his work in popular culture, see Edgar Allan Poe and music and Edgar Allan Poe in television and film.
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Edgar Allan Poe has appeared in popular culture as a character in books, comics, film, and other media. Besides his works, the legend of Poe himself has fascinated people for generations. His appearances in popular culture often envision him as a sort of "mad genius" or "tormented artist," exploiting his personal struggles.[1] Many depictions of Poe interweave with his works, in part due to Poe's frequent use of first-person narrators, suggesting an assumption that Poe and his characters are identical.[2]

This article focuses specifically on the historical Edgar Allan Poe making appearances in fiction, television, and film.

Contents

[edit] Fiction

  • "Revenant", a short story by Walter de la Mare, first published in The Wind Blows Over, 1936, in which Poe listens to a modern lecture on his life & works, then takes the lecturer to task for making facile judgements.
  • "When It Was Moonlight", a short story by Manly Wade Wellman appeared in the February 1940 issue of Unknown[vague]
  • "The Gentleman From Paris", a short story by John Dickson Carr, first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (April 1950), features an unidentified Poe, sitting in a bar in New York, solving a Dupin–like mystery for the title character. Poe disappears before he can receive a substantial reward six months before his death.[3]
  • "Richmond, Late September, 1849", a short story by Fritz Leiber, first published in Fantastic, February 1969, in which Poe meets a woman claiming to be the sister of Charles Baudelaire but who may in fact be Death. Poe died October 7, 1849, in Baltimore.
  • A Singular Conspiracy (1974) by Barry Perowne; A fictional treatment of the unaccounted period from January to May of 1844, in which Poe, under an assumed name, visits Paris in a failed effort to join French volunteer soldiers headed to aid Poland against Russia, instead meeting the young Charles Baudelaire and designing a conspiracy to expose Baudelaire's stepfather to blackmail, to free up Baudelaire's captive patrimony.
  • The Last Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe: The Troy Dossier (1978) is a novel by Manny Meyers which features Poe aiding the New York City police department in 1846 to solve a pair of murders.
  • The Man Who Was Poe (1989), a juvenile novel by Avi, features a young boy named Edmund befriending C. Auguste Dupin, who is actually Poe himself. Edmund and "Dupin" solve several mysteries in Providence, Rhode Island.
  • The Hollow Earth[4] (1990), a novel by Rudy Rucker in which Poe explores the inhabited center of the world
  • The Black Throne (1990), a science fiction novel by Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen features Poe as one of the main characters alongside a parallel world alter ego, master sargent Edgar Perry (Poe's alias when he was in the Army). The novel quotes Poe's poems and uses them as inspiration for the plot; one scene is similar to "The Pit and the Pendulum."
  • Route 666 (1993), a satirical cyberpunk novel in the Dark Future series by Kim Newman (writing as Jack Yeovil), features a ramshackle Eddy Poe chanelling Cthulhu.
  • The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe (1997) by George Egon Hatvary, features Poe's fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin befriending the author and subsequently investigating his mysterious death.
  • The Lighthouse at the End of the World by Stephen Marlowe (1995) concentrates on Poe's last week alive and has C. Auguste Dupin trying to solve his disappearance
  • Nevermore (1999), The Hum Bug (2001), The Mask of Red Death (2004), and The Tell-Tale Corpse (2006) novels by Harold Schechter. Nevermore depicts an intelligent, crime-solving Poe teamed up with the adventurous man of action, Davy Crockett.
  • Lenore: The Last Narrative of Edgar Allan Poe (2002) is a novel by Frank Lovelock that fictionalizes Poe's final days before his death. The story is presented as a delirious dream Poe has while in the hospital. C. August Dupin makes an appearance along with Lenore, depicted as a woman in love with a runaway slave named Reynolds. Lovelock weaves Poe's own letters and works into the story; direct quotes are acknowledged in bold, italicized text with notes on their origins.
  • The American Boy (2003) by Andrew Taylor an historical mystery story featuring Poe as a schoolboy in England.
  • The Poe Shadow (2006) by Matthew Pearl, a novel which revisits the strange events surrounding Poe's death.
  • A fictionalized younger Poe was a main character in Louis Bayard's The Pale Blue Eye, published in May 2006. Poe investigates a mysterious death during his time at West Point. Bayard emphasizes the young Poe's drinking habits.
  • The Blackest Bird (2007)by Joel Rose featured Poe as a main character. The novel which correctly follows some of Poe's history in writing and in his personal life.
  • The Lemony Snicket book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, have Mr. Poe, with his children Edgar and Albert, as a guardian of the Baudelaire children.
  • The Lost Kings reveals a society bent on terrorizing it followers. The Law of Dis, led by a man described like Poe aged after death, recreates a machine like that in "The Pit and the Pendulum," binding the protagonist to it.
  • The ghost of Edgar Allan Poe is often referred to in Robert Rankin's The Brentford Trilogy books.
  • A young Edgar Allan Poe, alongside Gullivar Jones, is the main protagonist of the novel Edgar Allan Poe on Mars (2007)by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier.

[edit] Comics

  • In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe (2002) by Jonathon Scott Fuqua follows a professor who has discovered the last diary of Poe, allegedly written on the author's deathbed. The diary reveals that Poe's artistic inspiration came from selling his soul to demons. As part of the deal, Poe can only write while in Baltimore; his attempts to leave that city have dire consequences. The graphic novel from Vertigo Comics is illustrated using digital illustrations and photography by Steven Park and Stephen John Phillips, respectively. [5]
  • Batman: Nevermore (2003) is an Elseworlds mini-series from DC Comics written by Len Wein, with art by Guy Davis. In the story Batman teams up with Poe to solve a number of murders. [6]
  • The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo by Dwight MacPherson, is a webcomic[7] originally published on DrunkDuck, which was collected into a trade paperback by ShadowLine. It follows Poe's adventures after he accidentally gets flushed down an outhouse.[8]
  • "The Baltimore Mystery", a Phantom comic detailing a fictional explanation of Poe's death, and the Phantom's role in his last days.

[edit] Television

[edit] Plays

  • Another Poe impersonator is Baltimore-native David Keltz, notable as the star actor in the annual Poe birthday celebration at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground every January.
  • In 2005, a reading of the Broadway-bound musical "Poe" was announced, with a book by David Kogeas and music and lyrics by David Lenchus, featuring Deven May as Edgar Allan Poe. Plans for a full production have not been announced. In early 2007, NYC composer Phill Greenland and book writer/actor Ethan Angelica announced a new Poe stage musical titled "Edgar," which uses only Poe's prose and letters as text, and Poe's poems as lyrics.[12]
  • In the mid 90s The Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival in association with Nationsbank presented Edgar - The Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Jack Yuken at five south Florida venues. Kevin Crawford was Poe. R.A. Smith and Heidi Harris co-starred. Kermit Christman directed.[citation needed]

[edit] Film

[edit] See also

Poe's work has had extensive influence on culture:

[edit] References

  1. ^ Neimeyer, Mark. "Poe and Popular Culture," collected in The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521797276 p. 209
  2. ^ Gargano, James W. "The Question of Poe's Narrators," collected in Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. p. 165
  3. ^ Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, ed. Mike Ashley, Carroll and Graf, New York, 1993, p. 431–454
  4. ^ MonkeyBrain Books
  5. ^ DC's profile for the hardcover edition of In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe (with preview) and the paperback one
  6. ^ Review of Batman: Nevermore issue #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5
  7. ^ The Chemistry Set » SURREAL ADVENTURES OF EDGAR ALLEN POO, Chapter 1, Canto 1
  8. ^ Dwight MacPherson on The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, Newsarama, July 10, 2007
  9. ^ Dickens of London at the Internet Movie Database
  10. ^ Washington Post. Jan. 21, 2000
  11. ^ www.astin-poe.com/. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  12. ^ Edgar: A New Chamber Musical
  13. ^ The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe at the Internet Movie Database
  14. ^ The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe at the Internet Movie Database
  15. ^ Tale of a Vampire at the Internet Movie Database
  16. ^ Poe at the Internet Movie Database