The man wasn’t all madness and premature burials. An exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum explores the writer’s life and widespread literary influence.
Edgar Allan Poe's stories of an aristocratic French detective, C. Auguste Dupin, served as a model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
“Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” Doyle said.
The Morgan Library & Museum
Poe sat for this daguerreotype four days after he attempted suicide.
He attempted suicide by laudanum overdose on Nov. 5, 1848, and got engaged to Sarah Helen Whitman later that month. They would never marry.
The Morgan Library & Museum.
He wrote that the daguerreotype was "perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern science."
The Morgan Library & Museum
Poe wrote one of his short stories on a 22-foot-long scroll made of little pieces of paper attached by sealing wax.
"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" was recently reassembled.
(Above is a linocut portrait of Poe by Eduard Prüssen.)
The Morgan Library & Museum
