Tynan Portillo presents a series about Edgar Allan Poe, the 19th century, and all manners of horror. With music and narration by Tynan Portillo. Today's episode, Unscripted, debunking the greatest myths about Edgar Allan Poe. Hello and welcome back to The Poe Show. I'm your host, Tynan Portillo. Today's episode was requested by a listener of the podcast. So, Sarah, if you're listening, thank you so much for the request. I'm really excited for this episode too. It is the Halloween special. Today is Halloween. Happy Halloween. And I'm very excited to get to one of the myths right now. But I want to start by saying that in this episode, I'll be discussing the greatest myths and the most prolific ones about Edgar Allan Poe and whether they are true, false, and most of them will be false, or if they technically have a grain of truth within them. My sources will all be linked in the description of this episode and include the biography by Richard Copley, Edgar Allan Poe, A Life, as well as the collected letters of Edgar Allan Poe.

First myth that I gotta squash real quick is the idea that Edgar Allan Poe hated his middle name. If you're a subscriber, you've already heard this. I'm sorry, it's just one of the biggest myths, so I've got to talk about it. This rumor alleges that Poe hated his middle name of Allan because it was given to him by his abusive foster father, John Allen. As most people should know, Rufus Griswold, Poe's arch nemesis, wrote Poe's obituary. It was filled with misinformation and blatant defamation. It was a complete vilification of Poe's character that shaped how the world perceived him from then on, and it persists to this day. Some people claim that by Rufus Griswold calling him by Edgar Allan Poe, his full name, that it's like he's mocking him with the name that he always hated. But this is not true. Edgar Allan Poe signed many letters and even some of his works with the signature Edgar Allan Poe as late as the year that he died. He preferred to sign a pen name, Edgar A. Poe, for his published works. Just like J.R. Tolkien or S.E. Hinton, it's a choice in style and image. There's no evidence that Poe hated his middle name, although he did definitely hate his foster father. And I think it's worth keeping in mind that his wife and cousin, Virginia, wrote an acrostic poem for Edgar Allan Poe. An acrostic poem being that the first letter of each line flowing down the passage spells something out. And hers spells out Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe. And it's very unlikely that, you know, with the couple supposedly loving each other so much that Virginia would write an acrostic poem talking about how much she loves her husband with her husband's full name if he didn't like his full name. So that myth is completely false. So that myth is completely false. Next. This is a juicy one.

Okay, so this has turned into one of my favorite slash most hated myths. It's a recently invented one, which I recently discovered, and I'm very excited to debunk it. And I go into more detail for this on my YouTube channel as well, so I'll link the video for that below so that way you can also check out that video. There is a man online who is claiming that Edgar Allan Poe never wrote The Raven. He says Poe stole The Raven from another writer. In fact, he claims that Poe didn't write most of the works published under his own name, including his poetry and his short stories. He says that Poe plagiarized most of his work and is a complete fraud. So that begs the question, who did write The Raven? Well, this person argues that The Raven was written by a man named Matthew Franklin Whittier. This is false, and there is no legitimate evidence to show that this claim is true. I'm not starting beef, by the way. I'm not promoting hate. Please don't send any hate to this person. I won't even name them in this episode because I've addressed them more directly in the YouTube video. I'm simply proving without a doubt that it's false and this person is spreading misinformation. So to be absolutely transparent, this person's claim stems from, by their own admission, a session of hypnosis that they underwent during which they figured out that they are the reincarnation of Matthew Franklin Whittier. Aha. Once he realized this, this person did research on Whittier and contends to be able to prove that Whittier, himself in a past life, anonymously wrote and published over 3,000 pieces of work, poetry, short stories, essays, and the like, many of which were given credit to Poe or people like Margaret Fuller. He's also tested this theory, this claim, with some large language AI models to see if this theory holds up, which, according to his tests with AI, seems to have supported his claim. But I hope I don't have to say why that result doesn't surprise me, considering the amount of misinformation that is flagrant in AI and the psychosis that can easily ensue when someone stops trusting reliable sources and turns to an AI model that is just trying to get you to be happy or like it or keep using it.

Now I have a quick note on the use of AI in this sense. Imagine you give the AI the equation A plus B equals C. Those are unknown variables. Each unknown value can change to whatever you want it to. So when it comes to history, if there are holes that haven't yet been filled or may never be filled with evidence, and we assign our own values to those A's, B's, and C's of the equation, we manipulate history. We don't actually uncover it. And I've said this before about Jack the Ripper. Everyone wants to know who did it, but we don't know and we will sadly never know. The evidence is gone, and any claims as to who the killer really was are not supported by enough concrete evidence to justify them. So if I go to an AI and I say, I want C to equal 4, therefore I think B equals 3. Do you think that A could equal 1? It's going to support your biased answer, of course. So if you just guess or assume or even make up what the unknown variables are just to support your biased conclusion, it will support that answer. And please also note that in this paper that this person wrote, he admits that he started with ChatGPT and stopped using it because it disagreed with him. He literally turned to models that supported his bias instead of accepting criticism. Not only is that very foolish and scary, but it may benefit this person online who wrote this material to know that an AI model recently gave false information to our US military about a Chinese ship in the Middle East carrying nuclear weapons. It hallucinated that information and made it all up. So don't think that these AI models aren't capable of that.

So essentially, this guy is claiming that he wrote The Raven in a past life. Uh-huh. But again, by this man's own admission, Whittier never claimed to be the author of any work when he was alive. But this man assumes that without any verifiable evidence whatsoever, Whittier gave a copy of The Raven to Poe in private while he was traveling, and Poe scoped the poem with a few edits and published it under his own name after it gained attention under the Quarles pseudonym. There is no evidence to back that up. This guy goes on to say that Whittier signed his works with a multitude of pseudonyms like Franklin Jr., Polonius, Poins, Quails, Quarles, and the symbol of an asterisk which has usually been associated with Margaret Fuller. He even apparently let his friends take credit for what he wrote. So apparently this Matthew Franklin Whittier guy is writing everything and letting everybody else take the credit. This guy's claims even stretch to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. He's saying that Matthew Franklin Whittier was the true author of A Christmas Carol, one of the biggest Charles Dickens stories of all time. But this man provides no evidence whatsoever to prove that Whittier actually did write these works. No original documents, no letters discussing the works, no personal accounts of Whittier or his associates, nothing. Actually, this guy says there's a secret code embedded in reviews of The Raven, supposedly written by Whittier. Secret codes hinting that he wrote The Raven. Now I know what you're thinking. Hey, why didn't Whittier just say he was the author? Well, this person making this claim states that the reason Whittier never came forward about being the real author is because he was involved in anti-slavery efforts and he couldn't risk the public attention. He continues to connect completely disconnected poems and works, saying that Whittier was referencing another author here, another poem there. And the biggest problem that he has is that he is making these connections between unrelated works and saying that it's Whittier's writing without ever being able to substantiate the claim that Whittier ever actually wrote anything that he's talking about.

And if you know Poe, you know the essay he wrote called The Philosophy of Composition, in which he describes how he came to write The Raven. The man claiming Poe stole The Raven says Whittier mocked Poe after reading this, not directly, but by parodying his own obscure work and referencing a poem by Quarles, in which he says moral men are not always Christian men, which was supposed to be poking fun at Poe's stealing of his poem. Without any solid proof whatsoever, he draws outlandish conclusions from unrelated sources and makes assumptions that satisfy his personal bias to fill the gaps in his arguments.

He postulates that a review of Poe reading The Raven in a theater, because it said “that remarkable poem” instead of “his” or “Poe's remarkable poem,” because it said the word “that” and not “his,” referring to Poe, makes it obvious that Whittier wrote the review and was saying that Poe wasn't the actual author. Are you kidding me? The bewildering and sad truth is that every time I try to look up anything regarding any of this, all of the results show the articles, videos, and essays made by this one guy asserting that Poe is a fraud. That is just worrying to me. Because what if in the next 50 to 100 years, just like with Rufus Griswold, people start believing this guy? Yeah, I'm a fan of Poe's writing, but I don't care if actual evidence comes out showing that he didn't write something that we think he did. I care about historical accuracy and bare face fabrications about demonstrable history.

The thing is, I think this person doesn't even realize how flaky his arguments are. On my YouTube video, he commented a point that was supposed to support his argument. He said that the raven is obviously written by a Christian, but The Domed City, now known as The City in the Sea, is a sarcastic mockery of heaven and couldn't have been written by the same person. Therefore, The Raven wasn't written by Poe. So I pointed out that The Domed City is literally about a city swallowed by hell. So I don't know where that analysis of his came from. And The Raven is literally about existentialism. The idea of no heaven, of nothing after death, no balm in Gilead. Seeing someone after death, nevermore. That's why the answer the Raven gives is so devastating to the narrator of the poem. He's contemplating that he will never see his beloved Lenore again.

But the guy literally just refused to acknowledge any points of my argument. To put the cherry on top of this banana shit—excuse me, split sundae—he claims that Matthew Franklin Whittier also wrote works that are attributed to, like I said, Margaret Fuller and even Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. What irks me more is honestly the claim that Margaret Fuller is stealing from Whittier. He wrote a whole paper on this. Fuller was a woman in the 19th century, creating a career and a name for herself in a world that had shoved her into a corner, establishing her independence through art and hard work without the dependency on men and striving to make her voice heard. The absolute gall you have to have to claim that you did the work and not her is beyond insulting and terribly disgusting. It would be embarrassing for anyone to agree with this person on what they say when they have no way of substantiating their argument.

I have seen a lot of what this person has published and posted at this point, and each instance they say, “No, you,” instead of making a valid argument or providing worthwhile evidence. They are not a rage baiter. They are not a troll. They seem to be sickly obsessed with an unverifiable theory. I am worried for any person now or in the future that believes these laughable, falsifiable lies. Okay, as you can tell, I was very passionate about that section because someone's so flagrantly wrong and unwilling to admit it and literally just contributing to misinformation about history. And I won't stand for that. So, yeah, my sources for that are all in the description and the video is there if you want to see more, but let's move on to another myth.

One of the biggest and most common myths about Edgar Allan Poe is that he was an alcoholic. So there's two things that we know for sure about Poe and alcoholism. Number one, Poe did drink. He drank alcohol. And number two, Poe was a lightweight. Now, theory that has developed over time is that he had some kind of alcohol intolerance, but it's currently unsubstantiated. There's no real way to verify that. There were just accounts from friends from when he was in college to when he was an adult that said he could handle very little alcohol and he could get drunk very easily, but also that he kind of knew how to hold his liquor and get himself to the proper buzzed feeling. So is that very dependable information? I kind of doubt it, but we do have certain events that provide more context.

In 1835, Poe got his first job working at the Southern Literary Messenger, but he was fired just a few weeks after employment, supposedly for his drinking getting in the way of his work. Poe was then rehired almost a month later, though, so, you know, that may be a rumor. Maybe it is substantiated. We don't entirely know. We also know that Poe had to get help from a friend, Annie Richmond, who helped him to become sober. He spent some time with her and her husband and family, and he turned this experience into the poem “For Annie.” In 1949, it was published. There is a line in that poem that talks about the terrible torture of thirst for the Acheron River being quenched by a greater water. This was referring to alcohol, the torture of thirst for the Acheron River, this thirst for this dangerous thing that is ever flowing and seems insurmountable. So he did receive that kind of help from Annie Richmond, and he did have that kind of problem at least when he went to stay with her and her family.

Many other works of Poe demonize alcohol and its effects one's character. That's blatantly true in The Black Cat, which features a narrator who is an alcoholic and does unspeakable evil. In The Cask of Amontillado, a character is lured to their doom with the promise of rare alcohol and while being inebriated. Hop-Frog features a character who seems to have a disgust and intolerance for alcohol similar to Poe himself. So although I don't think that just because a writer writes about something that means that it's true about them, because that would be a terribly stupid claim to make, that may have been some part of Poe cathartically being expressed through those stories. And let's also remember that Poe's birth father was an alcoholic who abandoned his family, and that may have further influenced his feelings on alcohol and his own troubles with it.

In 1842, we also have, I think, one of the biggest events that shows that Poe did have a problem with alcohol. In 1842, Poe was persuaded to take a job that was offered under President John Tyler's son, but he never showed up to the interview. And that was possibly because he was drunk, but he did write and say that he was sick. So that one's up for debate. And he was actually deceived by a member of the Customs House who was kind of jerking his chain about getting to be sworn into the new position at this date and that date and this later date. So eventually Poe just decided to go to the White House and talk to the president himself, which is something that you could do back then. President Tyler was actually a fan of Poe, so he agreed to the meeting. But when Poe got to Washington, this is where we know that he got drunk and had a rambunctious night on the town. One account said that he showed up to the White House drunk, but a more reliable retelling shows that Poe just got drunk at his hotel and made a fool of himself. He was wearing his coat inside out and getting a haircut without paying. So there is a pretty significant event where alcohol got in the way of Poe getting a job.

Poe also engaged in excessive drinking when he was seriously depressed, and there are some gaps in the years there. There was some time in college he would, you know, drink with friends. There was his time attending West Point where he would also drink with some friends. And then there was struggling for work and especially after seeing his wife and cousin Virginia contract tuberculosis and eventually her death. Um, that was the especially difficult time for Poe with alcohol. Finally, in the book *Absinthe: History in a Bottle*, there's a claim from Charles Baudelaire who argued that Poe drank absinthe, that Poe must have needed alcohol in order to transport him to the enchanted spaces of the unreal. There's no evidence or viable documentation to support this claim. And really, it just sounds like the musings of a fellow writer on another's work rather than a claim meant to be taken seriously.

So overall, in my eyes, with the way that alcohol stumbled his steps all through his life and got in the way of some opportunities for him, and considering the fact that it got worse with him turning to it in order to deal with increasingly depressive chapters of his life, Poe was an alcoholic by today's standards. But the claim usually stretches far beyond the truth. He did not turn to alcohol for inspiration for his stories, he didn't drink every day, he didn't drink till he blacked out, and he never became abusive. But he did suffer from a consistent temptation of the bottle to ease his woes, which he reluctantly prioritized over other interests in his life.

Along those same lines, we have a similar claim that Poe was a drug addict. Now, I can be a bit more blunt with this one: the answer is no. Poe had written to Annie Richman claiming to have attempted suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum after his proposal to Sarah Helen Whitman was rejected, and that happened because Whitman felt like she was too old for him and she didn't really trust his character, as his public image was being slandered quite a bit at that time. That is the only time that Poe has probably taken drugs. And I'm not going to say that Poe is incapable of lying either. He could have just been exaggerating something to Annie Richmond, saying that he was rejected and he doesn't know what he's going to do. So he just tried to swallow some pills. And, you know, I'm not going to say that he's not capable of exaggeration in order to gain sympathy. But that's the only time that Poe has at least admitted or we have any kind of record of him taking any sort of drug. Now, he might have used opium medically, as it was a common medicine during his time, but he never abused it or became addicted. And there's no other evidence that Poe was a drug user or abuser.

Some say that this idea actually comes from his stories being mixed up between the narrators and Poe himself, which, again, I think that's a stupid argument to say that, oh, he wrote about it, so he must have known about it. That's stupid. Poe—but it's not even that. Griswold, oh my gosh, he knew how to hold a grudge. Griswold wrote a whole biographical sketch that was included in *The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe*, published in 1850. It was a collection of his works, and it claimed—this autobiographical sketch claimed—to outline Poe's life. It's called *Memoir of the Author*. And in that piece, Griswold cemented even more outrageous claims about Poe's character that were completely untrue: claims he hadn't sold any stories in five years before his death, that he was a depraved drunk, and that he was a drug abuser. Rufus Griswold wrote that piece in 1850, months after Poe's death. And definitely he did it on purpose, you know, probably looking to gain that kind of edgeway with his own preposterous claims in a work that was supposed to commemorate his work, you know, *The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe*. And it was after his death. So more people are going to be reading about Edgar Allan Poe. So Rufus is literally just looking to fight. Pisses me off. Their rivalry is comparable to the relationship between Salieri and Mozart in the movie *Amadeus*.

Now, overall, this myth can be chalked up to a lie told by Poe's bitter enemy, Rufus Griswold, in an attempt to suly his character and taint his image, and just a random comment from a fellow writer with no other evidence. So it is completely false.

Now, as if the claims of Poe having these uncontrollable compulsions needed another edition, it's also widely believed that Poe was a gambling addict. You seem to get the label of addict to a lot of these rumors. The short answer is no. No, he wasn't. Poe gambled when he was a young man and gained quite a few debts from his college days at the University of Virginia. But that was because Poe was 17 when he went off to college and he had very little money. And he wrote to John Allen many times asking for money, but John Allen wouldn't pay for Poe to get a college education. He only sent him a tiny bit of money to get some books.

He only sent him a tiny bit of money to get some books. So Poe had to find a way to pay for his room, board, furniture, and classes, so he gambled. Now debtor's prison was a thing during this time, so Poe was in trouble if he couldn't pay off those debts. And because of these debts, Poe had to drop out of college, and he enlisted in the army as Edgar A. Perry. Later in life, around the mid-1840s, Poe would accrue more debts and file for bankruptcy for a total of $73,000 in today's money. Mainly that was for book debts and lent money, not even anything from gambling. So Poe did gamble once, maybe twice, but the myth that he was a gambling addict is completely false. Moving on to the myth that Poe was crazy. No. If anything, he had bipolar depression or just depression.

There are writings about Poe that say he would roam the streets drunk looking for fights and insulting innocent people so that way they would scrap. Again, a lot of it comes down to Rufus Griswold and the image that he was painting of Poe. And this has been denied by anyone who personally knew Poe. There were other obituaries written about Poe that showed him in a better light because they saw what a terrible job Rufus Griswold did. Now, it's possible that Poe's disection of human psychology in his stories and their gruesome nature is what made the public think that he was mad. But he isn't his characters. So, again, that claim is really stupid.

Now, was Poe mentally tortured? Absolutely. I mean, he dealt with the death of his birth mother at two years old, an abusive foster father who would beat and whip him and never believed in him or his dreams. His foster mother died, most likely from tuberculosis, when he was 20 years old. His brother William died of tuberculosis when Poe was 22 years old. His career was rife with constant struggle for money and literary disputes with rivals. His foster father died and left him nothing in a, what would now be considered, multi-million dollar inheritance. He struggled with alcohol. He was publicly accused of plagiarizing and had to defend himself in court and won. He filed for bankruptcy. His wife and cousin died from tuberculosis when he was 38 years old. And he saw his fame rise and his personal character fall all in the public eye. And he poured much of that into his writing. But he wasn't the mentally disturbed mad genius of a writer most people might view him as. Rather, he was severely traumatized and made some of the most beautiful stories from that trauma. So no, Poe wasn't crazy.

This next myth became popular for a little while in the 200s because of a book by John Evangelist Walsh published in 1998. In the book *Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe*, Walsh theorizes that Poe was murdered. Walsh has also written a handful of other books on Poe's love affairs and his detective fiction. But this theory is that the brothers of Sarah Elmira Shelton, Poe's new fiance at that time, had been angered at his proposal to her and threatened him once he got to Philadelphia. But then Poe escaped and hid around for about a week, changing his clothes and staying out of sight, until he was somehow intercepted by the brothers again and beaten and forced to drink alcohol, which eventually killed him. The evidence in the book, which in all honesty I have not read, but I'm relying on a review of the book by scholar Edwin J. Barton, is, quote, only plausible, not wholly persuasive, close quote. So as far as the concrete evidence goes, Poe was not murdered.

On to a very controversial topic in the literary and scholarly world: whether Poe was or wasn't racist. Now, to give proper context, Poe played with black children growing up. He had black nannies raise him on John Allen's plantations, and he had a black barber who lamented Poe's death once he found out that he had died. But please keep in mind we are not retreating to the “I have black friends” argument. Black people would still be allowed in some cases to raise white children and cut white people's hair. That does not mean that those white people weren't racist. Racism is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against someone on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, or the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another. White people could let black people raise their children and cut their hair and even play with them as children, but still not think of them as equal people. That's what we're talking about here. Now we know that John Allen owned plantations which had slaves, and his businesses sold properties which housed slaves, which means that John Allen participated in the slave trade. Most opposed personal views on political matters or matters of race were kept completely private, so most people turned to his writing to look for evidence of racist elements in his storytelling.

This is where we get into the territory of “We Don't Talk About the Orangutan,” referencing the murders in the Rue Morgue. So the story of this is apparently somebody—and you can type in “We Don't Talk About the Orangutan”—and my only source has been Reddit for this, but apparently someone went to a panel or a convention, something where they were discussing literature and Edgar Allan Poe. Or a convention, something where they were discussing literature and Edgar Allan Poe. And there was this group just discussing whether or not people think that Poe is racist and the evidence shown in his stories. And this person who went to this event said, “What about the orangutan?” And then the leader of the event just looked horrified and said, “We do not talk about the orangutan.” Because apparently there was a previous year where they had been debating long into the night and it got super, super heated about whether or not “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a racist story because, spoiler alert, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” has a monkey that is the culprit of a couple murders.

And the question is like, it's something along the lines of how the story depicts foreign creatures and foreign things as mystical, but also dangerous descriptions of the monkey, of the orangutan and the way that they talk about the voice. Like people in the story say it might be an Italian, it might be a German, but we can't tell. And apparently they overanalyzed it and it just got into this huge heated debate. It and it just got into this huge heated debate. So that is where the meme and the joke of “We do not talk about the orangutan” comes from. But I'm surprised that people don't ever talk about “Hop-Frog,” in which there is imagery of a straight-up L-Y-N, no space in between if you know what I mean, Ching, in a positive light.

So in that story, you have a main character who is abused by the evil characters, and the good character, the main character, devises a plan where he tricks the evil characters into tarring themselves, covering themselves in fur, locking themselves up in chains to go out and scare these people at a party. Then he connects those chains to a chandelier hook, hoists them up, essentially hanging these evil characters that are dressed as monkeys in chains and burning them alive. I'm just surprised I never hear people talk about that story. And I do think personally that it's shown to be in a positive light because it's our main character delivering like a badass line by the end of the story as well. And it's this kind of social justice of the main character getting back at the evil characters.

Now, I want to leave that open to interpretation and say, if you read that story and walk away with saying that it's the people who are being abused taking back power from the evil characters and therefore it's showing it as a reverse, And therefore, it's showing it as a reverse, you know, like instead of reinforcing racist imagery, it's using that to try and flip it and try to make a comment against racism and saying that the people who are evil to black people should be abused in the same way that they are abusing the black people. I feel like that can be open to interpretation. I feel like you can say that. I see it as a positive action in the story. Therefore, that's how I kind of see it. But looking outside of the stories, because as I've said, just because he wrote about it doesn't mean that he definitely believed it, right? That would be a stupid claim to make. It's just if there are elements in there that you can say maybe, possibly, then it's worth talking about. But there's also in the collected letters of Edgar Allan Poe something worth noting.

On March 19th, 1827, Poe wrote to John Allen while arguing with him about going to college. 1727, Poe wrote to John Allen while arguing with him about going to college. He's talking about John Allen wanting him to listen to him and not be an independent person. This is what he writes, quote, “You suffer me to be subjected to the whims and caprice not only of your white family, but the complete authority of the blacks. These grievances I could not submit to, and I am gone.” Close quote. I think that is worthwhile evidence to say that Poe possibly didn't see black people as equal to white people. Because the incredulity in that sentence of saying, “You're making me listen not only to you and your white family, but also to the black family that is, or my black nanny, you're making me listen to these black people.” And he's obviously showing that as a wrong that is being done unto him.

Now, I think that's very disappointing to figure that out about Poe. I mean, it was disappointing when I figured out that Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist and a racist and like, I think she was a she was a purist. I don't want to say that, “Oh, it was different back then.” I think that's a poor excuse. Nothing changes with that argument, you know? Like just in 200, the year 200, all smoking was banned on flights. That was 26 years ago. So if we say, “Oh, it was just different back then,” like tobacco companies still knew that it was bad. And still we can say it was wrong and it was good that there was some change made and that it's good to look back at that and say we need to continue to learn and grow. I mean, if you look at 1993, just 33 years ago, that's not even old enough to be the president of this country. The NIH Revitalization Act of 1993, Public Law 103-43 mandated by law for the first time that women have to be included in medical studies done by the National Institute of Health. That means that so many medicines, medical treatments, and products were made without knowing the full effect that they could have on women versus the effect they have on men. Women could be prescribed the same amount of medication as a man and easily overdose. Again, I think the excuse of it was just different back then or that's how things were back then is stupid. We should view history in the scope of our continued expansion of knowledge, in our continued growth as a human race. I think we should take this into consideration when reading Poe, that we should point it out, understand it, and see it for what it is. It is wrong. Does that take away from his literature or his influence on culture? I don't think so. I think that his works have grown beyond who he is. I think that most people just know about the scary stories and they have created this universe of gothic horror around him, similar to like H.P. Lovecraft, who held a lot of racist ideologies, but that universe of work has grown beyond him. Now, does this bring Poe down a peg on the pedestal of fame that we have placed him on? Yes, as well it should. Just because I like the man's writing and appreciate his life journey and even admire other parts of his character, does not mean that I should stand behind all of his actions or beliefs, or that he is infallible.

Which leads me to a significant fact and the myths surrounding it, that Poe married his cousin when she was 13. There's another easy answer here. Yes, he did that. Poe married his first cousin, Virginia Eliza Clem, when she was 13 and he was 27. This was not regular, even in his day. And you can tell that by the fact that they were married in relative secrecy and they lied on the marriage license saying that Virginia was 21 years old. Even in Poe's day, they were married in 1836. Although we hear the opposite, child marriage to older people was not, at least in America, common or just accepted. It happened, and actually happened more in the 19th century than in previous centuries, but it was not the norm. There are some other factors to this marriage to consider as well although to be clear this is wrong and I don't excuse it just because I'm a fan of Poe's writing. I think he was wrong to do this. I simply want to dispel the misinformation around it specifically that like Edgar Allan Poe was attracted to children. And I want to give the proper context, we can still see that this is wrong. Now, the average marrying age for women in the 19th century was most likely in the early 20s, and the average for men was most likely in the late 20s, mid to late 20s. But we have to keep in mind that the U.S. census did not tie age to marriage until somewhere around 1880. And they didn't take most marriage statistics until the 190s. So these numbers are rough estimates. Now, it was definitely seen as more appropriate among nobles and royalty in Europe, specifically in Europe, to betroth their sons and daughters for political moves, but that was usually among a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old instead of one being so much older, although that occurred. The cultural significance of marriage for girls was also seen as transitioning from obedience to parents to subservience to a husband. It was very important for women to marry in order to ensure that they had a future, so they married earlier than men.

Very strange time right after America's colonial period, where marriage and death rates were much higher, and birth rates and average lifespan were much lower. And although I can't find any evidence of the age of consent laws in Richmond, Virginia, where the Poe's were married, the Code of Virginia of 1849 set the age of consent for women at 14 years old. And again, there's no way of knowing if this was instituted during Poe's marriage. I just felt like it was worth mentioning because it did specify the age of consent being 14. But I mean, hell, most U.S. states until 1880, most of their age of consent, ages of consent was somewhere around 12 to 14 years old. That was until 1880. So that's kind of what's going on there in Richmond and the United States. Now, with the Poe family, Virginia and her mother were destitute, and they couldn't make an income for themselves. And Poe wanted to help them financially. Of course, he could have just given them money. They were a family, there was no taboo against sending money to relatives, and Virginia's mother also loved Poe and really wanted him to marry Virginia. She saw him as her own son, and she didn't want Virginia to marry anybody else. Now, a cousin of Virginia offered to take care of her in his own house with his wife in another state. This was a totally acceptable way for the women to receive support. But Virginia's mother didn't want this to happen. Virginia's mother wrote to Poe soon after receiving this offer to tell Poe that Virginia was essentially being stolen away. Poe also became very jealous and stated in a letter that he didn't want Virginia to move so far away from him. And Virginia's father had died 10 years before this marriage, so he couldn't give his consent. So that's one reason why they would have lied on the marriage license. So all in all, this was an oddball marriage. This was not common. The age of consent during that time in Richmond, Virginia, where they were wed, was either not set or I can't find any reliable sources that did set any kind of age, but she might have been underneath it. She did not have a father who was alive to give his consent to the union. Her mother wanted her to marry Poe. Poe didn't want her to move away and cared for by another relative. And as far as all accounts go from friends and associates of the Poe family, Poe and Virginia loved each other very much. It is theorized by some friends and associates of the Poes that Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Eliza Clem Poe either never had intercourse and consummated the marriage or they waited until Virginia was 16. That just comes down to their friends talking about them and private lives of individuals during the 19th century were exactly that. They were very private. So there's no way of truly knowing. Now, granted, I think we have to involve the argument. Children cannot consent. They cannot mentally, emotionally understand and should not be asked to physically commit to a marriage. So again, just saying this is wrong. It was wrong to happen. It was a product of the time. I don't care. It was wrong. And if I could go back in time and tell Poe to not do it, I would tell him not to do it. I would tell him, go after Sarah Elmira Shelton again. It doesn't matter. Like, just don't marry your cousin. She's way too young. She doesn't deserve this. And there are other avenues that they could have done to take care of them. So, all right, let's move on to the next myth.

Now, I don't know where this one comes from, but some people seem to think that Poe only wrote horror. That's just not true. I mean, you can read the spectacles and you'll see just how untrue that is. Poe wrote horror, science fiction, detective fiction, comedies, and poetry. He never limited himself to a specific genre, although he did understand what would sell and what was more for his own literary satisfaction. Like Al Aaraaf, a poem that he greatly adored, is not very well known even among Poe fans. Yet it was one of his favorites. But the Raven quickly became a new favorite of his because it seemed to catapult his work nationwide. So no, Poe didn't write only horror. Next we have one of the most persistent but weaker myths about Poe, which is that he was a loner. Poe had plenty of friends. This is just false. He had plenty of friends, plenty of colleagues, associates who loved interacting with him and said that he was often jovial, funny, and clever.

He was known to be prone to depressive episodes in which he would self-isolate, but his friends did check in on him frequently to make sure that he was alright. He played the game Hopfrog with Virginia and famously split his pants after a bad jump. He liked going on walks and talking with people about literature, poetry, and science. He wasn't antisocial, but he did know when he needed to be alone.

Lastly, I'd like to wrap up with a section I'll call, Did Poe Say This? A lot of quotes are falsely attributed to Poe, and I'd like to set the record as straight as I can. First one I have is, Somehow Palpatine Returned. That is actually Poe from Star Wars, completely different character, but I see the confusion. The next one I have is, I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. According to the Poe Museum, this quote is not a line from Poe, although I don't think I've ever heard of this one before. Next we have, Only Half of What You See and Nothing That You Hear. This is a line from Poe's story, The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather.

There are many lines from Poe that, from Poe the singer, there is a singer Poe that are also falsely attributed to Edgar Allen Poe, like the past is a peble in my shoe. I once got that one wrong. I think I put it on a TikTok or something. And sometimes I'm terrified of my heart, of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants, the way it stops and starts. That one definitely doesn't sound like Edgar Allan Poe, but somehow people attribute it to Edgar Allan Poe.

And just to note, if you see any famous quotes from Poe on Goodreads, they're most likely poorly sourced or made up. Most recently, I've actually seen people and Goodreads claim that Poe said, tell me every terrible thing you ever did and let me love you anyway. I don't know why this one got put on Poe because it's not his style or his prose at all. It's actually by Sade Zabala in her book, Cigarettes and Coffee. Now it's funny because if you look it up on Goodreads, it says it's by both. It says that quote is by Sade Zabala in her book Cigarettes and Coffee and by Edgar Allan Poe. So someone needs to double-check Goodreads here.

Well, all in all, I think we can see that there are plenty of outrageous myths about Edgar Allan Poe that can be reliably dispelled. And my hope is that history can be retold without inventing drama or crafting false images for the public to ogle at. Truth is stranger than fiction, and we deserve the truth. Thank you for listening to The Poe Show, and be sure to give this podcast a five-star rating, follow on YouTube to see my reviews of Edgar Allan Poe film adaptations, and subscribe to this podcast on your favorite platform. Share this episode with two people who love Poe and would like to learn more about him so they can know that this is the place for all things Poe. Happy Halloween. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Please look forward to the next episode as well, and you'll hear from me again in the next one on The Poe Show.