It’s October 16, and tonight is opening night of our Dream Within a Dream performance series.
There is a reason four out of five nights of this series are sold out – for generations, Edgar Allan Poe has intrigued audiences as an author synonymous with horror.
There’s more to Poe than just “The Raven”… read on to find out why Poe continues to fascinate us, and why we turn to him every spooky season.
- Poe invented the detective novel.
Edgar Allan Poe was not the first mystery author. Short mystery novellas had been published in Europe since Poe was a child. However, Edgar Allan Poe is widely credited with inventing the detective novel – a book in which the mystery is systematically solved by an individual. His character C. Auguste Lupin, who debuted in the story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, was an inspiration for the most famous 19th century detective: Sherlock Holmes.
2. Edgar Allan Poe and Abraham Lincoln were born the same year.
In 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and Abraham Lincoln was born in Larue County, Kentucky. Both places were very different from each other: Boston was a bustling portside city, and Lincoln was born in a log cabin in the countryside. Both men would go on to shape American history in uniquely different ways, and both faced untimely deaths, although under very dissimilar circumstances.
3. No one knows the real circumstances of Poe’s death.
On October 3, 1849, a delirious Edgar Allan Poe surfaced in a Baltimore tavern. He was whisked away to a hospital where he ultimately passed away on October 7. On the night of his death, he repeated the name “Reynolds,” but no one has ever figured out who Reynolds was.
Theories ranging from rabies to mercury poisoning have been floated regarding Poe’s death, but it still remains a mystery. His death happened around an election, which has made some historians theorize that perhaps he died from injuries related to being violently intimidated to vote a certain way, a process known as “cooping.”
4. Poe based some of his work on true crimes.
The short story The Mystery of Marie Roget, published in 1842 and credited with being a sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue, was based on the story of Mary Cecelia Rogers, a beautiful cigar store employee who was tragically killed in New York City in 1841. Taking real-life news and turning it into fiction was popular among American authors in the early 19th century. This story was probably the first crime that had actually happened that got turned into a detective story.
5. In his lifetime, Poe was most famous for being a literary critic.
Most of the money Poe made from writing in his lifetime came from his career as a magazine editor and critic. His essay “The Philosophy of Composition” details the process for methodically writing the perfect poem, down to the meter and rhyme… a process that described the form, mood and topic of The Raven. In that way, it’s fair to say that he practiced what he preached!
6. Poe was a skilled cryptographer who loved solving codes!
Edgar Allan Poe was a huge fan of secret codes, and was very skilled at solving them. While Poe was editor at Alexander’s Weekly Magazine, he challenged readers to send him “ciphers,” or messages written in code, for him to decipher. His story “The Gold-Bug” pays tribute to this love of codes and ciphers.
He ghostwrote two ciphers in 1841 under the name W.B. Tyler, which remained unsolved until the turn of the twenty-first century.
7. Poe had favorite words.
Well, historians suppose he did, considering that he used the words “aghast” and “ghastly” over 50 times each in his writings. It seems appropriate for his dark and moody subject matter.
8. Edgar Allan Poe was the child of Shakespearean actors.
His mother, Elizabeth Arnold, and his father, David Poe, were in the play King Lear around the time Edgar Allan Poe was born. Rumor has it that he was named after the character Prince Edgar from the play. Elizabeth, who was often referred to as Eliza, first started acting at the age of nine and had a successful career as a traveling actress. David fell in love with Eliza when he saw her on stage and controversially left the law, which he had been studying, to pursue acting with her instead.
9. Poe only made $9 for The Raven.
Despite the fact that the poem is one of the most famous and enduring poems in the English language, Edgar Allan Poe was given the going rate of $9 from the magazine The American Review. Today, that would be worth about $300. However, the poem was published simultaneously in the Evening Mirror as an “advanced copy,” which we have no record of him being paid for.
This dual publication in early 1845 led to The Raven almost immediately becoming famous across America and led to a book deal for Poe, who was offered the opportunity to publish a volume of his poetry afterward.
10. Dream Within a Dream is in its thirteenth (spOoOoOky!) season.
Actors Eric Frantz, Kelly Moore and Tony Dingman started the Evening with Poe series at the Frazier History Museum, where it ran for ten seasons. The Belle of Louisville started hosting the performance series in 2022, and this is our third season of this amazing performance!
Everything, from work selection to staging to music to costuming, is done fresh every year by these three talented actors, and we’re thrilled for you to see it this year.