Edgar Allan Poe Question

[Eldarion]

What was the last thing that Poe wrote?

[kah]

House of Usher (http://www.houseofusher.net/)

Check out this site.

[kah]

Speaking of Poe- click this...

Christopher Walken reads The Raven (http://instruct.uwo.ca/mit/204f/audio/raven.mp3)

[kah]

You're welcome.

[neglet]

Poe died Oct. 7, 1849, four days after being discovered "extremely ill" and half-conscious outside a Baltimore polling place. The last book he published before his death was Eureka: A Prose Poem by Edgar A. Poe (New York: putnam, 1848; London: Chapman, 1848). He published a few last poems and stories in Boston Flag of Our Union during the summer of 1849, the last of which was "Sonnet--To My Mother," in the July issue.

He was lecturing and hoping to start a new literary magazine in the few months before his death, but he wasn't a well person. I'm not sure what his last piece of writing actually was; he left several works unfinished, including some begun in the 1830s and early 1840s. Here are more details from the Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol 248:

Even Poe's last publications were a bit melodramatic. His death was followed almost immediately by publication of two of what came to be his best-loved poems, both dealing with the final triumph of death: "Annabel Lee" (Richmond Examiner and the New York Tribune) and "The Bells" (Sartain's Union, November). "Annabel Lee" is yet another lament for the death of a beloved woman, a wife, a child bride. She was taken away, the lover says, by jealous angels who envied their earthly love. But the speaker defies the power of either heaven or hell to "dissever my soul from the soul / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee," and he lies down by her side in her tomb by the sounding sea. "The Bells," a tour de force in onomatopoeia, traces the progress of life through four major stages signaled by different bells: silvery sleigh bells of childhood, golden wedding bells of youth, brass "alarum" bells of adulthood, iron funeral bells of age. Each section is developed at one more increment, so that the derisive triumph of the ghouls of death is nearly four times the length of the first section. Both poems are highly incantatory. Poe left little in manuscript: the opening paragraphs of a tale called "The Lighthouse" and a nearly complete draft of a satire on himself, "A Reviewer Reviewed."

I found this information in the "Literature Resource Center," an electronic database accessible through my library; you could check to see if your local library offers links online, it's a great resource.

[kah]

Meh. I think my link for Christopher Walken reading The Raven is way cooler than your information (which just happens to actually be helpful :lol:).