Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Edgar Allan Poe
The American master of horror fiction was as peculiar in his life as he was in his writing
Among the presents that came Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s way during the Christmas season of 1936 was a skull from an Indian burial ground. The gift was appropriate for a lifelong connoisseur of the weird.
The urge to create literature was as strong in the mid-1800s as it is today, but rejections were brutal and the pay was even worse
How does the writing life in preCivil War America compare with that of the 1980s?
The city has been a lure for millions, but most of the great American minds have been appalled by its excesses. Here an eminent observer, who knows firsthand the city’s threat, surveys the subject.
EVERY THURSDAY , when I leave my apartment in a vast housing complex on Columbus Avenue to conduct a university seminar on the American city, I reflect on a double life—mine.
The young poet became a legendary plebe in the few painful months he spent at West Point
One morning in June, 1830, Edgar Allan Poe rode the steamer from New York up the Hudson River to West Point. His spirits, like his expectations, were uncharacteristically high.
Poe’s witticism was not meant kindly, but it was actually a compliment. Without doubt Margaret Fuller stood first among women of the nineteenth century.
Featured Authors
