Poe in Boston

by Sheila Connolly

It was only this year that I learned that there is a public art project to honor Edgar Allan Poe in Boston.  What makes that funny is that he didn’t have very nice things to say about Boston.

As you’ve no doubt learned or seen over the years, Poe is commemorated in multiple cities. But he was born in Boston, to travelling actors.  No, the house isn’t there anymore—it was torn down in the 1960s and replaced by the state Transportation Building.  He lived in Richmond, VA, with foster parents after his own parents died.  There are Poe museums in Baltimore, the Bronx, and Philadelphia as well as Richmond; the room where Poe lived as a student at the University of Virginia are preserved in his honor.

All Poe has gotten from Boston until now is a small plaque on the wall of a luggage store. (Hmm, maybe there’s some irony there, because he certainly traveled around a lot.)

Why do we care?  What is it about dead writers that draws the average tourist accompanied by two point five whining children? Do they think some spirit of the author lingers in the stone and concrete?

It is interesting to note that the (much more successful) author Stephen King made a nice contribution earlier this year to the proposed monument.  It arrived at the Poe Foundation of Boston, which is managing the project, on April Fool’s Day, and was briefly thought to be a joke. You have to believe that King planned it that way, right?

Poe’s relationship with the city of his birth was a rocky one.  He sometimes denied having been born in Boston at all. He was contemptuous of the literary elite of Boston and the area, especially Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, saying they were “incapable of recognizing a decent poem if it fell onto their precious Common,” and frequently referring to Boston as “Frogpondium,” in reference to the frog pond at the Boston Common. In 1845 Poe gave a reading at the Boston Lyceum which bombed (he recycled an existing poem, one of his youthful efforts, rather than presenting something new) and the local papers slammed him.  In 1848 he tried to commit suicide in Boston but failed.

 

 

And still the city chooses to honor him, if belatedly.  They’ve commissioned a statue, to be erected in Edgar Allan Poe Square, a brick-paved plaza at the corner of Boylston and Charles streets.  The statue, to be executed by New York sculptor Stefanie Rocknak, features Poe with a humongous and rather terrifying raven swooping out of an open trunk, with a human heart (really? Yes, I know it’s a reference to The Telltale Heart, but still…) and loose papers fluttering behind him. Running after an elusive idea, or trying to flee a city he didn’t like?

How ambivalent we are about our writers! But maybe Longfellow had the last word when he said, “Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.”

 

Manor houses! Lost art works! A doomed romance!  All you could ask for in a mystery novel, coming February 2014

 

Poe's True Following

by Jeanne Matthews
Author of the Dinah Pelerin Mysteries

Everyone who leaves a comment this weekend will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of Jeanne's new book, HER BOYFRIEND'S BONES.

Edgar Allan Poe invented the mystery genre before the word “detective” was coined.  His brainy sleuth Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot and everyone who writes detective fiction today owes a debt to Poe’s creative genius. The writers who blog as “Poe’s Deadly Daughters” pay homage to his legacy on a daily basis.

I hadn’t thought consciously about the man for years until I tuned in to an episode of the TV show, “The Following.” 
 
The plot involves an English lit professor who is obsessed with Poe. As a “tribute” to his hero, he has murdered dozens of women. Captured and sent to prison, he escaped and launched a cult of copycat serial killers. Call me cozy, but psychotic serial killers aren’t my cup of tea. Personal taste aside, I still think “The Following” exploits the element of horror in Poe’s work while ignoring the craft and complexity. It’s true that whenever a woman appears in one of his stories or poems, she tends to be dead. Reading his biography, it’s not hard to see why. Poe experienced a lot of bad luck in his life – persistent poverty, melancholy, alcoholism, and more than a few scathing reviews of both his work and his character. But when it came to the ladies, he was positively snakebit.

His mother Eliza, an itinerant actress, died of consumption at the age of 24 and his father, who had deserted Eliza and their three children, died a few weeks later. Two-year-old Edgar was taken in and raised by the Allan family, but the love of a foster mother couldn’t compensate for the loss of his birth mother. He spent his entire life searching for a substitute. 

At the age of twelve, he attached himself to Jane Stanard, the beautiful mother of a school friend, but she soon went mad and died. His childhood sweetheart Elmira Royster comforted him for a time, but while he was away at school she married another man. Resilient to a fault, he transferred his affections to his cousin Virginia. He married her when he was 27 and she was 13, although he maintained publicly that she was much older.
 
He idolized little Virginia, but it wasn’t long before “a wind blew out of a cloud” and chilled his young bride, as recounted in the poem “Annabelle Lee.”  While Virginia lay dying of tuberculosis, Poe drowned his sorrow in drink. His spirits rebounded miraculously when he met the “ardent, sensitive, and impulsive” Fanny Osgood.  The two conducted a clandestine love affair until Fanny, too, felt a chill and betook herself to a warmer clime for her health’s sake. With Fanny gone and Virginia coughing her life away, poor lonely Edgar again sought solace, this time in the arms of an author named Elizabeth Ellet. Things were looking up in the romance department until Fanny got wind of the affair and in a jealous snit, tipped Virginia to her husband’s infidelity. If Virginia was saddened by the news, she didn’t suffer for long.  She died at the age of 20.

 Poe continued to write, but his stories didn’t earn enough to keep his creditors at bay.  “Murders in the Rue Morgue” fetched all of $56.  “The Purloined Letter” paid $12 and “The Tell-Tale Heart” $10.  His gambling debts mounted and his drinking grew heavier. He despaired of finding a woman who wouldn’t abandon him, but then along came Sarah Helen Whitman, a writer and poet who awoke in him “an ecstatic happiness and wild, inexplicable sentiment.”  More importantly, this one appeared physically sturdy and mentally sound, not the type to sink into madness or succumb to a chill wind. Unfortunately, her mother didn’t cotton to Poe and Sarah decided that his drinking habit was more than she could handle. She very sensibly declined his offer of marriage.  

Heartbroken once more, he found consolation in the sympathetic company of Mrs. Annie Richmond.  He wrote to her, “My love for you has given me new life.” But Annie had no intention of leaving her wealthy husband for a poverty-stricken drunk and Edgar’s hopes of a lasting relationship were dashed. At the end of his romantic rope, he learned that Elmira Royster’s husband had died and, hope renewed, he hastened back to her and proposed. But Elmira couldn’t put up with his drinking either and sent him packing. 

The most interesting writers aren’t always the most agreeable people. Sad to say, Poe doesn’t sound as if he would have made a very pleasant companion for any woman. It would no doubt astound him to realize how thoroughly his influence has permeated the culture and how many deadly daughters and sons his pioneering stories have spawned.

Everyone who leaves a comment this weekend will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of Jeanne's new book, HER BOYFRIEND'S BONES. 
*****************************
Jeanne Matthews is the author of the Dinah Pelerin international mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press, including Bones of Contention, Bet Your Bones, and Bonereapers.  The newest release, Her Boyfriend’s Bones, is set in Greece on the Aegean island of Samos.  For more information about Jeanne’s books, visit her website.    

A Pebble in My Shoe

by guest Camille Minichino

I can't be sure what Edgar Allan Poe meant by this quote: "The past is a pebble in my shoe," but the sentiment fits me, too.

Maybe it's because my high school history teacher's primary duty was to coach the football team to victory. (He failed at that, too.)

But I can't blame Mr. T. forever. I've had ample time to visit the past in a meaningful way, to learn the details of wars, to imagine lunch with the greats of bygone ages.

In his latest movie, "Midnight in Paris," Woody Allen takes us on a trip to the past, giving a contemporary screenwriter a chance to cavort with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and many others from the surveys of English literature even physics majors were required to take.

We see this “poll question” all the time: if you could visit the past, whom would you have lunch with?

Edgar Allan Poe comes to mind. I might ask him if he could sleep at night after writing the "The Tell-Tale Heart." I couldn't, after reading, the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. The same with "The Cask of Amontillado." I was young enough to worry myself sick that I'd hurt someone enough for him to take that level of revenge.

But if I ever did have a chance to time travel, I'd go forward, not back.

I don't want to revisit the time when some women had their lower ribs surgically removed to achieve a more pleasing (to whom?) waistline. And I already know all I want to about the days before plumbing and the zipper and all the iStuff.

I'd like to know what becomes of the Kindle.

It's fun to have my slide rule hanging in my office, as a reminder of earlier times, but I wouldn't want to give up my new 27-inch iMac!

I'd love to go away for a while and rest, and then come back and talk to my grandchildren’s grandchildren. That would put us at around 2060.

Some questions for them:

1. Has there been a First Gentleman in the White House yet?

2. What did Sue Grafton do after Z and how many Reacher novels were there in all?

3. What became of all the little kids at the mall whose mommies told them "Good job!" just for grabbing the sippy cup?

4. Did Keira Knightley’s face ever wrinkle?

5. What’s the official language of the United States?

. . .  and more.

Of course I could read sci fi and get someone's idea of the future, or I could write it and make my own predictions.

But I want to know what actually happens, whether there'll be paper books in the year 2100, and did we ever give peace a chance?

What would you want to know?

Camille Minichino is a retired physicist turned writer, the author of The Periodic Table Mysteries. Her akas are Margaret Grace (The Miniature Mysteries) and Ada Madison (The Professor Sophie Knowles Mysteries). The first chapter of 'The Square Root of Murder," debuting July 2011, is on her website: http://www.minichino.com.

POE IS COMING

by Sheila Connolly

Apparently nineteenth-century sleuths are enjoying a resurgence. The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes enjoys an unflagging popularity, and recently he has enjoyed renewed attention in the mystery writers' community. There are those among us who love the recent Robert Downey Jr. movie version, and who look forward to the coming sequel; there are those who think it is a travesty and a corruption of the canon.

Others have taken great glee in the recent BBC limited series, starring the delightful Benedict Cumberbatch, in which Holmes is thrust into modern times. Then there is the 2010 book The Sherlockian, an entertaining novel by Graham Moore, in which the author alternates chapters featuring a contemporary protagonist who has just been inducted into a society that reveres Holmes and finds himself applying Holmesian principles to solving a crime, with chapters tracing a fictionalized account of Arthur Conan Doyle's foray into detecting in 1900. Holmes lives on, in many incarnations.

So it was inevitable that the commercial television networks would sit up and take notice: now ABC has commissioned a series pilot starring the non-fictional Edgar Allan Poe as a detective in the 1840s in Boston. Titled simply Poe, the one-hour drama is described as "a crime procedural that transforms the famed author and poet into the world's first detective, who uses "unconventional methods to investigate dark mysteries in 1840s Boston."

As you may recall, we Daughters here recently celebrated Edgar's birthday, and I'm not sure any of us would envision him as a sleuth. Not only did he seldom sit still (he spent time in the military, he worked at a variety of jobs, and he changed residence frequently), but he rarely completed anything save poems and some significant short stories. In the 1840s–the period that ABC has chosen–he announced he would start his own journal in Philadelphia–which never happened. He sought a political appointment–which never happened. He went back to New York, where he worked for a time in journalism. Then he moved to the Bronx, where his wife died. When did he manage to spend any time in Boston, much less solve any crimes there?

While Poe may be labeled the inventor of the mystery story, he didn't do it in Boston–Philadelphia claims that honor. He may have been born in Boston, but he had a rather rocky relationship with its writers, to the extent that it has been called a literary war. Poe was quoted as saying of Boston, "Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good." He simply didn't like Boston.

So one must wonder why ABC decided that Boston was a better place than Philadelphia, Baltimore or Richmond VA to set a mystery series. It's sure not the weather.  More "dark crimes" there?

Still, I suppose we Daughters should be pleased that our mentor is being inducted into the ranks of mystery writers who solve crimes, on the small screen (and at least he won't be scheduled opposite Castle).

Now the most important question is, who would you cast as Poe?

Happy birthday, dear Eddie...from your Deadly Daughters

**WINNER! Congratulations to Caryn in St. Louis, winner of our anniversary giveaway. Caryn, please send me your mailing address (darlene at darleneryan.com) and I'll get your copy of Poe in the mail. Thanks to everyone who commented.**

As Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, January 19, rolls around again, Poe's Deadly Daughters enters its third year of blogging. It's a big year for Poe: his ghost will be blowing out 200 virtual candles, while Mystery Writers of America is bestowing its 2009 Raven awards on the Edgar Allan Poe Society and the Poe House in Baltimore, whose curator, Jeff Jerome, endearingly refers to the father of the detective story as "Eddie."

To celebrate we have a copy of Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow, to give away. Published to coincide with the anniversary of Poe's birth, the anthology features 19 stories inspired by the master's writing. Authors include Sharyn McCrumb, Melanie Tem, Gregory Frost, and John Langan. In comments tell us what the highlights of the past year were for you, or just say "Hello" and you'll be entered in a drawing for the book. Check back here Sunday night to find out who the winner is. Good luck!

Here are some of the highlights for each of us in the past year. Thanks for sharing the joys and challenges of the mystery writer's life with us!

Elizabeth Zelvin (Liz)
I celebrated my 64th birthday with the publication of my debut mystery, Death Will Get You Sober, launching the book with a memorable party at The Mysterious Bookshop in New York and fulfilling a lifelong dream. In January, I planned my nationwide book tour; in February, I planned my virtual tour through mystery cyberspace; the virtual tour, guest blogs and interviews on many wonderful mystery blogs, took place in March; the launch in April; a tour that took me to libraries and bookstores in twenty states in May and June; and then I got to bite my nails for a few months, till St. Martin's offered me a contract for the sequel, Death Will Help You Leave Him. It'll be out this fall, and in the meantime, I've had a short story accepted by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and have been writing and sending out additional stories, some about my series characters and others breaking new ground for me, including historical and paranormal mysteries and a revenge fantasy.

Lonnie Cruse

2008 was a year of big numbers for me. I turned sixty-five, we celebrated our forty-fifth wedding anniversary, our youngest son turned forty, and our grandson became a teenager. Along with those numbers, my first book in my new Kitty Bloodworth/'57 Chevy series came out right at the end of '07, so promotion, signings, and sales (some very important numbers) all took place last year. I'm thankful to my readers and all the numerous libraries that bought copies, as the book sold very well. I hope to continue the series with Five Star publishing it. And I hope to keep blogging here with my lovely Poe sisters. Poe's writing had a huge influence on me as a reader, and I'll never forget reading his work for the first time. I do hope he has some help with those 200 candles!

Julia Buckley
What a fun year it's been! I think this year will be most auspicious, because, if I continue Lonnie's "numbers" theme--I just turned 44 and my other favorite literary great, William Shakespeare, is 444 years old. I feel there is some psychic connection here--not to mention the connection with Edgar Allan. The other day my family was playing a trivia game called "Name Chase," and the question in the air began with "An American writer and poet." With the first clue we got neither gender nor time period, and yet my ten-year-old son and teammate said, "Edgar Allan Poe!" Even more shocking: he was right! Apparently he's been reading "The Raven" in school and has really taken to Poe and his complex rhythms and rhymes. It helped us win the round, and convinces me that our literary greats are always watching over us. :)

May you all have an equally auspicious year!

Sharon Wildwind
Well, the terrible twos weren't so terrible after all. Unlike toddlers, we on the Poe Team didn't have any difficulty making decisions, though several times we came close to losing it because there were so many choices for us, so many wonderful mystery folk out there to share the blog space with, that we had trouble deciding who would come next. Greedy little two-years that we were, we wanted it all! All the writers. All the readers. All the friends. All the books. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Come back, bring your friends. Maybe by next year we'll have figured out how to distribute virtual cake to everyone. Enjoy.

And this just in . . .
Did you know Edgar Allen Poe made a significant contribution to the science of cosmology? From Scientific American
Looking for Background Noise: The Cosmic Reality Check A puzzle, known as Olber’s paradox, was solved in 1848 by Edgar Allan Poe. In his prose poem Eureka, he argued that the stars must not have had enough time to fill the universe with light. The darkness of the night sky, then, tells us that the universe has not existed forever. Not only has that hypothesis stood the test of time, it eventually proved crucial to formulating the big bang theory. Who knew?

Darlene Ryan
I spent a big chunk of 2008 off my feet in a cast and as mushy as it sounds, learned that the writing community really is more like a small town than a sprawling metropolis. My writing friends and colleagues kept me up on everything that was happening in publishing and surrounded by stacks of books. My blog sisters were full of encouragement and good for more than one very needed laugh. And I discovered how many friends I'd made here. (There's nothing like animated barnyard animals singing a get well wish to pull you out of a pity party.)

Thanks for sharing our love of books, cheering our successes and ignoring the times we goofed.

Sandra Parshall
For me, the greatest pleasure of blogging has always been the chance to interview other writers and ask a lot of nosy questions. My thanks to all who submitted to my interrogation during the past year. I promise lots more in the coming year.

A major highlight of 2008 was my visit to the Poe House in Baltimore. In this tiny house, shared with his aunt and cousin (soon to be wife) Virginia, Poe produced some of the most astonishing and memorable writing the world has ever seen. The poverty in which he lived is obvious, and it's also clear that he worked on the margins of American culture, achieving only meager success in his lifetime. Two hundred years after his birth, I hope he is somehow aware of the great esteem in which he is now held, and the enduring popularity of his work. The honors heaped on him this year are well-deserved and too long in coming.

Happy birthday, Eddie.

Above: Poe's tiny bedroom, where he wrote

Happy Birthday to Poe: Our First Anniversary

It's Edgar Allan Poe's 199th birthday today, and the Deadly Daughters of the father of the detective story are celebrating. We launched our blog exactly one year ago today. What a year it's been! Sandy won an Agatha for Best First Mystery, Lonnie launched a second series, Julia worked on a suspense stand-alone and was published in a fiction anthology, Sharon's third mystery came out, Liz had a short story in an anthology, and Darlene joined us and sold a new book. We were named "one of eight top mystery blogs" in Library Journal and praised as "schmooze-worthy" by J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet and January Magazine. Most of all, we've had fun!

To celebrate, we're reprinting Carolyn Hart's piece on how come Poe is considered mystery's founding father, along with a few words from each of us on what it's meant to be one of Poe's Deadly Daughters.

From "The History of the Mystery"
by Carolyn Hart
(InSinC: The Sisters in Crime Newsletter, Vol. XIX, No. 4)

Elements of the mystery are present in much literature, both ancient and modern, but the world waited until Edgar Allan Poe for the first true mystery stories....Poe...create[d] the first amateur detective, Auguste Dupin....[T]he modern mystery traces its beginning to the publication in 1841 of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. All of the elements necessary for a mystery novel were first gathered together in fiction by Poe:
The amateur detective whose exploits were chronicled by an admiring friend
The locked room mystery
An innocent suspect in jeopardy
Careful detection through following clues fairly offered
A trap laid for the true villain
The solution through the efforts of the detective
The first series character
All of this was achieved by Poe in three stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined Letter.

Elizabeth Zelvin:

As the only then unpublished mystery writer in the group, I felt honored to be invited to join Poe's Deadly Daughters. Death Will Get You Sober had just been accepted by St. Martin's, and a year later, it's still creeping toward publication, though my short story, "Death Will Clean Your Closet," appeared in November in Murder New York Style with others by members of Sisters in Crime. I'd never been a blogger or a reader of blogs. So first, I had to figure out how to do it. I didn't know that my weekly blogging deadline would make me into something not far from a journalist: a writer who can turn out an appropriate 500 to 800 word piece on demand about just about anything. Nor did I dream I'd get to know so many luminaries in the field—writers I've admired for decades and rising stars—by interviewing them for Poe's Deadly Daughters: Nancy Pickard, Julie Smith, Carolyn Hart, Jeremiah Healy, Laurie King, Rhys Bowen, Alafair Burke, Sandra Scoppetone, and Lee Goldberg. But best of all: What a joy to have "blog sisters!"

Lonnie Cruse:

I have soooo enjoyed blogging with the other PDDs, and reading their posts, not to mention all of our guest bloggers and interviewees! And I've spent an enjoyable time reading my PDD sisters' books! And learning more about Poe, though I've been a fan of his works for many years.

This year I will be very busy promoting my new series, so the Metropolis Series, featuring Sheriff Joe Dalton will be on hold, at least until 2009. I hope to see book #5 in that series published then. Meanwhile, I'm working on the second '57 series book, crossing my fingers that it will be published by Five Star. Fifty-Seven Heaven received good reviews from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly.

Writing down our stories is fun and satisfying for authors, at least until we hit a dead end or can't decide where to take the story next. Which generally results in long walks, multiple games of Spider Solitare, and sneak attacks on our secret stash of chocolates (light or dark, your choice.) The most satisfying part of writing for any author is hearing our readers say how much they've enjoyed our books. So please accept my personal thanks to all of you who read this blog and also read our books.

Sharon Wildwind:

What a hoot this first year has been, except maybe for the week where I forgot what day was Tuesday, and missed the blog all together. Writing for an audience has helped me clarify many things that I thought I knew, until I sat down to write about them. Then I had to really think. This whole year has been like a scrapbook of the mind, going all the way from my mother's cookbook to more information about bats than anyone should have. And the best thing was it all, somehow, related to mystery-writing.

The absolute highlight of the year was hearing from an old friend, who "googled" me, found the blog, and got in touch. So, B.L. (and your friend Matt D.) this one's for you. Hugs, Sharon

Julia Buckley

I've greatly enjoyed my year with the Deadly Daughters. I have found that, aside from being able to work with women who share my interest in mystery writing and reading, I am able to count on the daughters as a supportive network of friends. I don't know if I'm already having the "senior moments" my mother complains of, or if they are more like "harassed working mother moments," but I've done my fair share of forgetting and mistake-making, and in every case the daughters swooped in to my aid. Will there ever be a finer group of co-bloggers? Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.

Darlene Ryan:

As the newest Deadly Daughter I had the advantage of joining Sandy, Liz, Lonnie, Julia and Sharon after all the hard work was done. (And it was an honour to be invited to join them.) In the past year I've had one book published and another has sold. And with the encouragement of my fellow bloggers I've started working on that mystery I always said I was going to write. A couple of old college friends found me through this blog. I made one of my writing idols (Tess Gerrittsen) laugh when I shared my semi-deluded belief that we sort of look alike. I made new friends. I gained new readers. Thank you, everyone.

Sandra Parshall:

I'm the one who swore she would never blog -- and look at me now, a year into it and enjoying it more than I thought possible. 2007 was a head-spinning year for me, and one of the best things about it was working with this great group of women writers. I've also loved having the excuse -- er, opportunity -- to ask some wonderful writers a lot of nosy questions in interviews. I hope our loyal readers have enjoyed the past year as much as we have. Stick with us -- we have a lot more in store for you!


To our readers: The one mystery we've never been able to solve is how to get you all to leave more comments, even those of you who tell us privately that you visit regularly. So please help us celebrate our anniversary by checking in. Just click on the Comments link right below this blog, type in a greeting or what you like about Poe's Deadly Daughters or what you'd like to see more of from us, and click on Publish Your Comment. It's dead easy. ;)