Dozens of Poe Letters and Manuscripts to be Exhibited

Poe Letter to John Bisco

The Poe Museum’s new exhibit From Poe’s Quill: The Letters and Manuscripts of Edgar Allan Poe, which will run from April 26 until July 11, 2012, promises viewers the closest thing to standing over Poe’s shoulder while he writes his famous tales. Visitors will have the rare opportunity to study Poe’s unique handwriting and follow his thought process by exploring dozens of original documents culled from a number of public and private collections. Some of these pieces have never been publicly displayed. Others have only recently been discovered. The Poe Museum will celebrate the exhibit opening with an Unhappy Hour on Thursday, April 26 from 6-9 P.M.

The exhibit will include Poe’s handwritten letters, short stories, poetry, essays, and notes. Among the highlights of the exhibit are a letter written by Poe to American author Washington Irving (“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”), Poe’s autobiography, the earliest Poe manuscript in private hands, Poe’s last letter, and the only complete manuscript for a Poe tale in a private collection. The exhibit will also reunite fragments of manuscripts that have long been separated and owned by different collectors. An especially unusual piece will be poem supposedly written by Poe’s spirit (with the help of a medium) a decade after Poe’s death. This manuscript once belonged to Poe fan and collector Vincent Price.

The Poe Museum’s Curator Christopher Semtner says of the exhibit, “The Poe Museum will be celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, and we want to have an exhibit worthy of the occasion. Poe’s manuscripts are the most sought after manuscripts in American literature. Because he died young and because his works were not always appreciated during his lifetime, Poe’s letters and manuscripts are now relatively rare.”

When the exhibit opens on April 26, Poe Museum visitors will be able to see it an another “once-in-a-lifetime” exhibit Stormier, Wilder, and More Weird: James Carling and “The Raven,” which features, for the first time since 1975, the complete set of English artist James Carling’s circa 1883 drawings for Poe’s most famous poem. The Raven exhibit, which opened January 14, continues through May 1, 2012.

Samples from the upcoming exhibit are below.

The Spirits of the Dead

First Page of Manuscript for Epimanes

The Streets of Baltimore

Among the lenders to this exhibit are Susan Jaffe Tane, the Museum of the Macabre, and Anonymous Private Collectors.