edgar allan poe Archives - Evanston Public Library

National Poetry Month: April 5th

April 5, 2016

The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace–
Radiant palace–reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion,
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This–all this–was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

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A Show That Lives Up To Its Poe-tential

October 3, 2013

“Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul” is a new exhibit opening Friday at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum. Drawn from holdings of the Morgan, the New York Public Library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, and Susan Jaffe Tane, described as “the world’s foremost private Poe collector, the exhibit brings together an amazing collection of Poe materials including manuscripts, letters, first editions, Poe daguerreotypes, and “even a fragment of Poe’s original coffin.” There are some treasures as well – “three copies of Poe’s first book, “Tamerlane and Other Poems, which is among the rarest books in American literature (only 50 copies were printed, and just 12 remain), and one of only three existing pages of “The Lighthouse,” a story left unfinished at Poe’s death.” Besides all the Poe artifacts, the show also highlights his influence on other writers such as Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, Vladimir Nabokov and Stephen King. Read more about the collection in this NYT article. And check the EPL catalog for works by and about this writer.

Laura

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

February 4, 2011

The Newly Complicated Zora Neale Hurston

The discovery of three “lost” stories by the Harlem Renaissance author is detailed in this engrossing essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Differing dramatically from her better known works, the stories unearth an intriguing new side to the Southern folk writer.

A Bestiary of the Evolving Book

The influence of e-readers on the types of books that will be created in the future is detailed by Scholarly Kitchen. Starting with the “Classic E-book” on our Nooks and Kobos, this tech-savvy article explores “Enhanced Books,” “Muscular Books,” “Social Books,” and 140-character “Staccato Books.”

The Virginia Woolf You Never Knew

Flavorpill celebrates Virginia Woolf’s birthday with 59 little known facts about the extraordinary author including: 1) Her childhood nickname was “The Goat;” 2) She was a formidable bowler; 3) She and her husband owned a pet monkey named Mitz.

A Birthday Tradition Nevermore

A mysterious yearly ritual at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe seems to have come to an end. For 60 years, an unknown visitor would emerge from the shadows on Poe’s January 19th birthday to toast the macabre writer with three roses and a half bottle of cognac. Now, for the second year, the visitor has failed to appear.