The Poe Shadow

Benjamin Dreyer, Richard Elman, Megan Fishmann, Laura Ford, Jonathan Jao, Jennifer Jones, Vincent La Scala, Libby McGuire, Gene Mydlowski, Grant Neumann, Jack Perry, Tom Perry, Jillian Quint, Carol Schneider, Judy Sternlight (at Modern Library), Beck Stvan, Simon Sullivan, Bonnie Thompson, and Jane von Mehren. I have also received support and insight from Chris Lynch at Simon amp; Schuster Audio, Stuart Williams and Jason Arthur at Harvill Secker UK, Elena Ramirez at Seix Barral, and Francesca Cristoffanini at Rizzoli.

Thanks to those who have helped this book progress through reading and reinforcing. This includes, as always, my family; my parents, Susan and Warren Pearl, and my brother, Ian Pearl; as well as Benjamin Cavell, Joseph Gangemi, Julia Green, Anna Guillemin, Gene Koo, Julie Park, Cynthia Posillico, Gustavo Turner, and Scott Weinger; and Tobey Wiggins, who lent amazing encouragement and supportiveness.

Additional thanks: the archivists and librarians at Boston Public Library, Harvard University, Iowa University, Duke University, Maryland Historical Society, Enoch Pratt Public Library of Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, New York Public Library, the Library of Virginia and the University of Virginia. Also, for generous input related to Poe and specific areas of nineteenth-century life and culture: Ralph Clayton, Dr. John Emsley, Allan Holtzman, Jeffrey Meyers, Scott Peeples, Edward Papenfuse, Jeff Savoye, Kenneth Silverman, and Dr. Katherine Watson.

Further appreciation to the generations of scholars who have assembled our current knowledge about Poe's life, including the exceptional Burton Pollin (who first noticed the appearance, mentioned in this novel, of the initials 'E. S. T. G.' in the Broadway Journal). A note of praise for the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore website (eapoe.org), created by Jeff Savoye, which should set the standard for all online literary resources. Finally, thanks to the staffs and supporters of the Poe homes and museums in Baltimore, Fordham, Philadelphia, and Richmond, as well as the Westminster burial yard in Baltimore, for sustaining the story of Poe as a living experience and allowing all of us a chance to visit.

About The Author

MATTHEW PEARL is the author of The Dante Club, a New York Times and international bestseller, and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante's Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. The Dante Club has been published in more than thirty languages and forty countries around the world. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He can be reached via his website, www.matthewpearl.com.

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[1] Since the above was in type, a scholar's preliminary comparison of Rufus W. Griswold's memoir with surviving manuscripts of Poe's letters has determined that this sentence, along with dozens of others, had been invented by the biographer as part of an effort to depict his subject as ungenerous to friends. Unfortunately, I had no means of acquiring this knowledge at the time I discovered the reference during my stay in the Maryland penitentiary.

[2] I implored Duponte to expand on this ill-omened statement in full; he relented only under the condition that I never write of it publicly. If I am at a future date able to relate Duponte's revelations touching this point, it must be at a site far more private.

[3] The notion that Poe tried to visit Dr. Brooks's house has been under dispute. Poe's unsuccessful attempt to visit Brooks was first reported by nineteenth-century biographer George Woodberry. Later scholars objected on the grounds that Woodberry did not name a source. In addition to the fire, I have been able to uncover Woodberry's unmentioned source as Brooks's son.