EDGAR ALLAN POE'S 'THE RAVEN' IS PUBLISHED IN 1845

The Raven First Edition by Edgar Allan Poe

Today, The Grandma has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí, one of her closest friends. Jordi and The Grandma love Literature and they have been talking about Edgar Allan Poe, one of their favourite writers, and his famous poem The Raven that was first published on a day like today in 1845.

The Raven is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. 

First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further distress the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word Nevermore. The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.

Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, The Philosophy of Composition. The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship, and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.

More information: Edgar Allan Poe, Romanticism in Terror Stories

The Raven was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845. Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Critical opinion is divided as to the poem's literary status, but it nevertheless remains one of the most famous poems ever written.

Poe wrote the poem as a narrative, without intentional allegory or didacticism. The main theme of the poem is one of undying devotion. The narrator experiences a perverse conflict between desire to forget and desire to remember. He seems to get some pleasure from focusing on loss.

Edgar Allan Poe & The Raven

The narrator assumes that the word Nevermore is the raven's only stock and store, and, yet, he continues to ask it questions, knowing what the answer will be. His questions, then, are purposely self-deprecating and further incite his feelings of loss.

Poe leaves it unclear if the raven actually knows what it is saying or if it really intends to cause a reaction in the poem's narrator. The narrator begins as weak and weary, becomes regretful and grief-stricken, before passing into a frenzy and, finally, madness. Christopher F. S. Maligec suggests the poem is a type of elegiac paraclausithyron, an ancient Greek and Roman poetic form consisting of the lament of an excluded, locked-out lover at the sealed door of his beloved.

Poe says that the narrator is a young scholar. Though this is not explicitly stated in the poem, it is mentioned in The Philosophy of Composition. It is also suggested by the narrator reading books of lore as well as by the bust of Pallas Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom.

He is reading in the late night hours from many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Similar to the studies suggested in Poe's short story Ligeia, this lore may be about the occult or black magic. This is also emphasized in the author's choice to set the poem in December, a month which is traditionally associated with the forces of darkness.

More information: The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

The use of the raven -the devil bird- also suggests this. This devil image is emphasized by the narrator's belief that the raven is from the Night's Plutonian shore, or a messenger from the afterlife, referring to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, also known as Dis Pater in Roman mythology. A direct allusion to Satan also appears: Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore...

Poe chose a raven as the central symbol in the story because he wanted a non-reasoning creature capable of speech. He decided on a raven, which he considered equally capable of speech as a parrot, because it matched the intended tone of the poem.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe said the raven is meant to symbolize Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.

He was also inspired by Grip, the raven in Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens. One scene in particular bears a resemblance to The Raven: at the end of the fifth chapter of Dickens's novel, Grip makes a noise and someone says, What was that – him tapping at the door? The response is, 'Tis someone knocking softly at the shutter. Dickens's raven could speak many words and had many comic turns, including the popping of a champagne cork, but Poe emphasized the bird's more dramatic qualities.

Poe had written a review of Barnaby Rudge for Graham's Magazine saying, among other things, that the raven should have served a more symbolic, prophetic purpose. The similarity did not go unnoticed: James Russell Lowell in his A Fable for Critics wrote the verse, Here comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.

The Free Library of Philadelphia has on display a taxidermied raven that is reputed to be the very one that Dickens owned and that helped inspire Poe's poem.

More information: Smithsonian

Poe may also have been drawing upon various references to ravens in mythology and folklore. In Norse mythology, Odin possessed two ravens named Huginn and Muninn, representing thought and memory.

According to Hebrew folklore, Noah sends a white raven to check conditions while on the ark. It learns that the floodwaters are beginning to dissipate, but it does not immediately return with the news. It is punished by being turned black and being forced to feed on carrion forever. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, a raven also begins as white before Apollo punishes it by turning it black for delivering a message of a lover's unfaithfulness. The raven's role as a messenger in Poe's poem may draw from those stories.

Nepenthe, a drug mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, erases memories; the narrator wonders aloud whether he could receive respite this way: Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!

Poe also mentions the Balm of Gilead, a reference to the Book of Jeremiah (8:22) in the Bible: Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

In that context, the Balm of Gilead is a resin used for medicinal purposes suggesting, perhaps, that the narrator needs to be healed after the loss of Lenore. In 1 Kings 17:1 - 5 Elijah is said be from Gilead, and to have been fed by ravens during a period of drought. Poe also refers to Aidenn, another word for the Garden of Eden, though Poe uses it to ask if Lenore has been accepted into Heaven.

The poem is made up of 18 stanzas of six lines each. Generally, the meter is trochaic octameter -eight trochaic feet per line, each foot having one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.

Poe, however, claimed the poem was a combination of octameter acatalectic, heptameter catalectic, and tetrameter catalectic. The rhyme scheme is ABCBBB, or AA,B,CC,CB,B,B when accounting for internal rhyme. In every stanza, the B lines rhyme with the word nevermore and are catalectic, placing extra emphasis on the final syllable.

The poem also makes heavy use of alliteration Doubting, dreaming dreams... 20th-century American poet Daniel Hoffman suggested that the poem's structure and meter is so formulaic that it is artificial, though its mesmeric quality overrides that.

More information: Poetry Foundation

Poe based the structure of The Raven on the complicated rhyme and rhythm of Elizabeth Barrett's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship. Poe had reviewed Barrett's work in the January 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal and said that her poetic inspiration is the highest -we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself.

As is typical with Poe, his review also criticizes her lack of originality and what he considers the repetitive nature of some of her poetry. About Lady Geraldine's Courtship, he said I have never read a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with so much of the most delicate imagination.

Poe first brought The Rave to his friend and former employer George Rex Graham of Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia. Graham declined the poem, which may not have been in its final version, though he gave Poe $15 as charity.

The Raven by E.A. Poe, Evening Mirror, Jan. 29, 1845

Poe then sold the poem to The American Review, which paid him $9 for it, and printed The Raven in its February 1845 issue under the pseudonym Quarles, a reference to the English poet Francis Quarles.

The poem's first publication with Poe's name was in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, as an advance copy. Nathaniel Parker Willis, editor of the Mirror, introduced it as unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift... It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.

Following this publication the poem appeared in periodicals across the United States, including the New York Tribune (February 4, 1845), Broadway Journal (vol. 1, February 8, 1845), Southern Literary Messenger (vol. 11, March 1845), Literary Emporium (vol. 2, December 1845), Saturday Courier, 16 (July 25, 1846), and the Richmond Examiner (September 25, 1849). It has also appeared in numerous anthologies, starting with Poets and Poetry of America edited by Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1847.

The immediate success of The Raven prompted Wiley and Putnam to publish a collection of Poe's prose called Tales in June 1845; it was his first book in five years. They also published a collection of his poetry called The Raven and Other Poems on November 19 by Wiley and Putnam which included a dedication to Barrett as the Noblest of her Sex. The small volume, his first book of poetry in 14 years, was 100 pages and sold for 31 cents.

More information: Poets

In addition to the title poem, it included The Valley of Unrest, Bridal Ballad, The City in the Sea, Eulalie, The Conqueror Worm, The Haunted Palace and eleven others. In the preface, Poe referred to them as trifles which had been altered without his permission as they made the rounds of the press.

Later publications of The Raven included artwork by well-known illustrators. Notably, in 1858 The Raven appeared in a British Poe anthology with illustrations by John Tenniel, the Alice in Wonderland illustrator. The Raven was published independently with lavish woodcuts by Gustave Doré in 1884 (New York: Harper & Brothers). Doré died before its publication.

In 1875, a French edition with English and French text, Le Corbeau, was published with lithographs by Édouard Manet and translation by the Symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé. Many 20th-century artists and contemporary illustrators created artworks and illustrations based on The Raven, including Edmund Dulac, István Orosz, and Ryan Price.

Edgar Allan Poe on The Simpsons

Poe capitalized on the success of The Raven by following it up with his essay The Philosophy of Composition (1846), in which he detailed the poem's creation. His description of its writing is probably exaggerated, though the essay serves as an important overview of Poe's literary theory.

He explains that every component of the poem is based on logic: the raven enters the chamber to avoid a storm, the midnight dreary in the bleak December, and its perch on a pallid white bust was to create visual contrast against the dark black bird. No aspect of the poem was an accident, he claims, but is based on total control by the author.

Even the term Nevermore, he says, is used because of the effect created by the long vowel sounds, though Poe may have been inspired to use the word by the works of Lord Byron or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Poe had experimented with the long o sound throughout many other poems: no more in Silence, evermore in The Conqueror Worm.

More information: Representative Poetry Online-University of Toronto

The topic itself, Poe says, was chosen because the death...of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. Told from the lips...of a bereaved lover is best suited to achieve the desired effect. Beyond the poetics of it, the lost Lenore may have been inspired by events in Poe's own life as well, either to the early loss of his mother, Eliza Poe, or the long illness endured by his wife, Virginia.

Ultimately, Poe considered The Raven an experiment to suit at once the popular and critical taste, accessible to both the mainstream and high literary worlds. It is unknown how long Poe worked on The Raven; speculation ranges from a single day to ten years. Poe recited a poem believed to be an early version with an alternate ending of The Raven in 1843 in Saratoga, New York. An early draft may have featured an owl.

The Raven has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's The Jewbird in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's The Parrot Who Knew Papa in 1976.

More information: Study

The process by which Poe composed The Raven influenced a number of French authors and composers, such as Charles Baudelaire and Maurice Ravel, and it has been suggested that Ravel's Boléro may have been deeply influenced by The Philosophy of Composition. The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music, and video games.

The painter Paul Gauguin painted a nude portrait of his teenage wife in Tahiti in 1897 entitled Nevermore, featuring a raven perched within the room. At the time the couple were mourning the loss of their first child together and Gauguin the loss of his favourite daughter back in Europe.

The name of the Baltimore Ravens, a professional American football team, was inspired by the poem. The Simpsons dedicated an episode to The Raven. Chosen in a fan contest that drew 33,288 voters, the allusion honors Poe, who spent the early part of his career in Baltimore and is buried there.

More information: The Raven by The Simpsons

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there,

wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams

no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe

EDGAR ALLAN POE, ROMANTICISM IN TERROR STORIES

Edgar Allan Poe

Today, The Grandma has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí, a closer friend. He is a great writer and they like talking together about Literature and authors.

Jordi has been explaining some interesting stories about Edgar Allan Poe, one of the best writers of the Universal Literature, who died on a day like today in 1849.

Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. The Grandma loves his novels and his writing style and she has searching some Poe's novels and audios to share with Jordi.

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809-October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic.

Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story.

He is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them well into young adulthood.

Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar Poe repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of Poe's secondary education. He attended the University of Virginia but left after a year due to lack of money. Edgar Poe quarreled with John Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name.

Edgar Allan Poe

It was at this time that his publishing career began with the anonymous collection Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to a Bostonian.

Edgar Poe and John Allan reached a temporary rapprochement after the death of Frances Allan in 1829. Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and he ultimately parted ways with John Allan.

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. He married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836. In January 1845, Poe published his poem The Raven to instant success, but Virginia died of tuberculosis two years after its publication.

Poe planned for years to produce his own journal The Penn, later renamed The Stylus, but he died before it could be produced. He died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at age 40; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other causes.

Poe and his works influenced literature around the world, as well as specialized fields such as cosmology and cryptography. He and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.

More information: Poe Museum

He was born Edgar Poe in Boston on January 19, 1809, the second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe Jr. He had an elder brother William Henry Leonard Poe and a younger sister Rosalie Poe. Their grandfather David Poe Sr. emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland around 1750.

Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeare's King Lear which the couple were performing in 1809. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis). Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful merchant in Richmond, Virginia who dealt in a variety of goods, including tobacco, cloth, wheat, tombstones, and slaves. The Allans served as a foster family and gave him the name Edgar Allan Poe, though they never formally adopted him.

The Allan family had Poe baptized in the Episcopal Church in 1812. John Allan alternately spoiled and aggressively disciplined his foster son. The family sailed to Britain in 1815, and Poe attended the grammar school for a short period in Irvine, Scotland, where John Allan was born, before rejoining the family in London in 1816. There he studied at a boarding school in Chelsea until summer 1817. He was subsequently entered at the Reverend John Bransby's Manor House School at Stoke Newington, then a suburb 6 km north of London.

Edgar Allan Poe

Poe moved with the Allans back to Richmond, Virginia in 1820. In 1824, he served as the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor guard as Richmond celebrated the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette.

In March 1825, John Allan's uncle and business benefactor William Galt died, who was said to be one of the wealthiest men in Richmond, leaving Allan several acres of real estate. The inheritance was estimated at $750,000, equivalent to $17,000,000 in 2018. By summer 1825, Allan celebrated his expansive wealth by purchasing a two-story brick home named Moldavia.

Poe may have become engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster before he registered at the University of Virginia in February 1826 to study ancient and modern languages. The university was in its infancy, established on the ideals of its founder Thomas Jefferson. It had strict rules against gambling, horses, guns, tobacco, and alcohol, but these rules were generally ignored.

Jefferson had enacted a system of student self-government, allowing students to choose their own studies, make their own arrangements for boarding, and report all wrongdoing to the faculty. The unique system was still in chaos, and there was a high dropout rate. During his time there, Poe lost touch with Royster and also became estranged from his foster father over gambling debts.

He claimed that Allan had not given him sufficient money to register for classes, purchase texts, and procure and furnish a dormitory. Allan did send additional money and clothes, but Poe's debts increased.

More information: The New Yorker

He gave up on the university after a year but did not feel welcome returning to Richmond, especially when he learned that his sweetheart Royster had married Alexander Shelton. He traveled to Boston in April 1827, sustaining himself with odd jobs as a clerk and newspaper writer, and he started using the pseudonym Henri Le Rennet during this period.

After his brother's death, Poe began more earnest attempts to start his career as a writer, but he chose a difficult time in American publishing to do so. He was one of the first Americans to live by writing alone and was hampered by the lack of an international copyright law.

American publishers often produced unauthorized copies of British works rather than paying for new work by Americans. The industry was also particularly hurt by the Panic of 1837. There was a booming growth in American periodicals around this time, fueled in part by new technology, but many did not last beyond a few issues. Publishers often refused to pay their writers or paid them much later than they promised, and Poe repeatedly resorted to humiliating pleas for money and other assistance.

Edgar Allan Poe

After his early attempts at poetry, Poe had turned his attention to prose. He placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began work on his only drama Politian. The Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded him a prize in October 1833 for his short story MS. Found in a Bottle. 

The story brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, a Baltimorean of considerable means. He helped Poe place some of his stories, and introduced him to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Virginia.

Poe became assistant editor of the periodical in August 1835, but White discharged him within a few weeks for being drunk on the job. Poe returned to Baltimore where he obtained a license to marry his cousin Virginia on September 22, 1835, though it is unknown if they were married at that time. He was 26 and she was 13.

He was reinstated by White after promising good behavior, and he went back to Richmond with Virginia and her mother. He remained at the Messenger until January 1837. During this period, Poe claimed that its circulation increased from 700 to 3,500. He published several poems, book reviews, critiques, and stories in the paper.

More information: PBS

On May 16, 1836, he and Virginia held a Presbyterian wedding ceremony at their Richmond boarding house, with a witness falsely attesting Clemm's age as 21.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was published and widely reviewed in 1838. In the summer of 1839, Poe became assistant editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. He published numerous articles, stories, and reviews, enhancing his reputation as a trenchant critic which he had established at the Southern Literary Messenger. Also in 1839, the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes, though he made little money from it and it received mixed reviews. Poe left Burton's after about a year and found a position as assistant at Graham's Magazine.

In June 1840, Poe published a prospectus announcing his intentions to start his own journal called The Stylus, although he originally intended to call it The Penn, as it would have been based in Philadelphia. He bought advertising space for his prospectus in the June 6, 1840 issue of Philadelphia's Saturday Evening Post: Prospectus of the Penn Magazine, a Monthly Literary journal to be edited and published in the city of Philadelphia by Edgar A. Poe. The journal was never produced before Poe's death.

More information: Mental Floss

Around this time, he attempted to secure a position within the administration of President Tyler, claiming that he was a member of the Whig Party. He hoped to be appointed to the Custom House in Philadelphia with help from President Tyler's son Robert, an acquaintance of Poe's friend Frederick Thomas.

Poe failed to show up for a meeting with Thomas to discuss the appointment in mid-September 1842, claiming to have been sick, though Thomas believed that he had been drunk. Poe was promised an appointment, but all positions were filled by others.

Edgar Allan Poe

One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano, which Poe described as breaking a blood vessel in her throat. She only partially recovered, and Poe began to drink more heavily under the stress of her illness. He left Graham's and attempted to find a new position, for a time angling for a government post. He returned to New York where he worked briefly at the Evening Mirror before becoming editor of the Broadway Journal, and later its owner. There he alienated himself from other writers by publicly accusing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism, though Longfellow never responded.

On January 29, 1845, his poem The Raven appeared in the Evening Mirror and became a popular sensation. It made Poe a household name almost instantly, though he was paid only $9 for its publication. It was concurrently published in The American Review: A Whig Journal under the pseudonym Quarles.

The Broadway Journal failed in 1846, and Poe moved to a cottage in Fordham, New York in what is now the Bronx. That home is now known as the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, relocated to a park near the southeast corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road. Nearby, he befriended the Jesuits at St. John's College, now Fordham University. Virginia died at the cottage on January 30, 1847. Biographers and critics often suggest that Poe's frequent theme of the death of a beautiful woman stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his wife.

Poe was increasingly unstable after his wife's death. He attempted to court poet Sarah Helen Whitman who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Their engagement failed, purportedly because of Poe's drinking and erratic behavior. There is also strong evidence that Whitman's mother intervened and did much to derail their relationship. Poe then returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster.

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, in great distress, and… in need of immediate assistance, according to Joseph W. Walker who found him. He was taken to the Washington Medical College where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849 at 5:00 in the morning. He was not coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. He is said to have repeatedly called out the name Reynolds on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Some sources say that Poe's final words were Lord help my poor soul. All medical records have been lost, including his death certificate.

Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as congestion of the brain or cerebral inflammation, common euphemisms for death from disreputable causes such as alcoholism. The actual cause of death remains a mystery. Speculation has included delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera, and rabies. One theory dating from 1872 suggests that cooping was the cause of Poe's death, a form of electoral fraud in which citizens were forced to vote for a particular candidate, sometimes leading to violence and even murder.

More information: Smithsonian

Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as The Poetic Principle. He disliked didacticism and allegory, though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface. Works with obvious meanings, he wrote, cease to be art. He believed that work of quality should be brief and focus on a specific single effect. To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea.

Poe describes his method in writing The Raven in the essay The Philosophy of Composition, and he claims to have strictly followed this method. It has been questioned whether he really followed this system, however. T. S. Eliot said: It is difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his poem with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pains over it: the result hardly does credit to the method. Biographer Joseph Wood Krutch described the essay as a rather highly ingenious exercise in the art of rationalization.

Eureka: A Prose Poem, an essay written in 1848, included a cosmological theory that presaged the Big Bang theory by 80 years, as well as the first plausible solution to Olbers' paradox. Poe eschewed the scientific method in Eureka and instead wrote from pure intuition. For this reason, he considered it a work of art, not science, but insisted that it was still true and considered it to be his career masterpiece. Even so, Eureka is full of scientific errors. In particular, Poe's suggestions ignored Newtonian principles regarding the density and rotation of planets.

More information: Archive

Deep into that darkness peering, 

long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, 

dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe