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Death was not uncommon.) They were escorted out in different clothes and disguises to vote, and October 3 had been a local election day in Baltimore. (The ‘coop’ was a place of improvised incarceration where the victim was plied with drink and often beaten into cooperation. It is known Poe suffered from heart arrhythmia which was exacerbated by stimulants, so a heart attack or stroke seem more than possible.Īlthough the evidence is largely circumstantial, a nonetheless compelling popular theory holds that Poe was the victim of ‘cooping’, then a common form of electoral fraud in America in which vulnerable people were grabbed off the street by ‘cooping gangs’ and coerced into voting for a specific candidate as many times as they could. This could have resulted from a long-standing condition growing worse over time, meningitis, or a more recent head trauma. This has been interpreted by modern biographers as most likely some sort of brain lesion, the cause of which remains unclear. Although his medical records and death certificate have been lost, newspapers at the time reported his cause of death as ‘congestion of the brain’ or ‘cerebral inflammation’, terms often euphemistically applied to drinking yourself to death. Whether he was asking for this person or denouncing his killer, nobody knows. The only thing of note Poe said in the hospital was to repeatedly call out the name ‘Reynolds’ the night before he died. Like a character in one of his own mysteries, Poe, who was a dapper dresser as a rule, was wearing clothes so rustic and shabby that his attending physician, Dr John Moran, did not think they were his.
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His rescuers assumed he was at the end of a savage drinking binge. The circumstances leading up to Walker’s intervention, therefore, remain a mystery to this day, as does the reason for him being in Baltimore in the first place – he lived in New York, regularly travelling to Richmond, Virginia, where he intended to relocate to marry his childhood sweetheart. Poe was coherent enough to ask that a friend who lived in the area, Dr Joseph Snodgrass, be contacted and the doctor, accompanied by Poe’s uncle, conveyed by the then delirious author to the Washington Medical College, where he died without ever fully coming to his senses. He was 40 years old.įour days before, he had been found in the street outside the Gunner’s Hall public house ‘in great distress, and in need of immediate assistance by a passer-by called Joseph Walker, a compositor on the Baltimore Sun. When he died in Baltimore on Sunday, October 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe, probably the most innovative and influential figure in 19th-century American literature, was raving and destitute. The author died in 1849 due to heart failure.Stephen Carver looks at the life of probably the most innovative and influential figure in 19th-century American literature. He was an early pioneer in the genre of science fiction as was fascinated by the science of his time, and he involved new inventions in his stories. Poe as a poet was classified as notable, even his early verses existed in the universal literary canon such as “To Helen,” “Ulalume,” and “The Raven.” His name is always accompanied by the ravens. Moreover, “The Raven” is one of the best-known poems in American literature and it became one of the definitive signs of Poe. His concept of “ratiocination” inspired a huge number of authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who presented to the world the great Sherlock Holmes. He also played a key role in re-approaching the themes of dark myths, macabre, and mystery.īorn in 1809, his “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” presented the early notions of the modern detective story and horror. Poe was one of the most celebrated authors in the history of literature. Tuesday marks the birth anniversary of the influential Gothic Literature figure Edgar Allan Poe.