Although Edgar Allan Poe is most often identified with stories of horror and fear, there is an unrecognized and even forgotten side to the writer. He was a self-declared lover of beauty who “from childhood’s hour . . . [had] not seen / As others saw.” Poe and the Visual Arts is the first comprehensive study of how Poe’s work relates to the visual culture of his time. It reveals his “deep worship of all beauty,” which resounded in his earliest writing and never entirely faded, despite the demands of his commercial writing career. Barbara Cantalupo examines the ways in which Poe integrated visual art into sketches, tales, and literary criticism, paying close attention to the sculptures and paintings he saw in books, magazines, and museums while living in Philadelphia and New York from 1838 until his death in 1849. She argues that Poe’s sensitivity to visual media gave his writing a distinctive “graphicality” and shows how, despite his association with the macabre, his enduring love of beauty and knowledge of the visual arts richly informed his corpus.

Although Edgar Allan Poe is most often identified with stories of horror and fear, there is an unrecognized and even forgotten side to the writer. He was a self-declared lover of beauty who “from childhood’s hour . . . [had] not seen / As others saw.” Poe and the Visual Arts is the first comprehensive study of how Poe’s work relates to the visual culture of his time. It reveals his “deep worship of all beauty,” which resounded in his earliest writing and never entirely faded, despite the demands of his commercial writing career. Barbara Cantalupo examines the ways in which Poe integrated visual art into sketches, tales, and literary criticism, paying close attention to the sculptures and paintings he saw in books, magazines, and museums while living in Philadelphia and New York from 1838 until his death in 1849. She argues that Poe’s sensitivity to visual media gave his writing a distinctive “graphicality” and shows how, despite his association with the macabre, his enduring love of beauty and knowledge of the visual arts richly informed his corpus.

Although there have been over 700 illustrators of Poe’s work over the past two centuries, this book chooses to examine only the best of them. Beginning with the French in the nineteenth century and tracing the great illustrators of Poe to the present, this book not only provides close analyses of individual visualizations but also seeks to supply an art history context to understanding their emergence. The majority of the artists featured remain unknown, even to Poe scholars, although their artwork represents iterations inspired by the most famous of Poe’s poems and stories. In some cases, the illustrations helped increase the visibility of particular Poe works and to make them part of the international Poe canon. A few of the illustrators featured in this book (e.g., Manet, Doré, Redon, Beardsley) are recognized among the most famous artists in the world. Others, such as Martini and Blumenschein, while remaining minor figures in art history, nevertheless produced immortal work based on Poe’s fiction and poetry. While still other visual artists represented here (Rackham, Dulac, Clarke) achieved artistic fame as book illustrators based on homages to other writers and fairy tales in combination with their Poe studies; their work on Poe, however, helped to solidify their larger reputations as professional illustrators. The last chapter extends traditional visualizations influenced by Poe to include his impact on twentieth- and twenty-first century filmmakers and cartoonists. They, too, found in Poe’s writing either a source for direct re-creation or an inspiration for their own atmospheric excursions into the bizarre, the exotic, and the psychologically complex.

"Edgar Allan Poe's legacy continues to thrive more than one hundred seventy years since his mystery death. Poe's ubiquitous presence is evident in not only literature published today but also film, television, music, visual arts, the tourism industry, and many more fields. How does Poe command such a hold on so many imaginations? Why do so many people who work in such disparate fields feel drawn to him? Although Poe's impact transcends time and place, the book's essays feature those creators who have direct knowledge of Poe's significance for contemporary U.S. culture. They work in professions in which Poe himself had been employed (e.g., poet and short story writer) or represent fields known for engaging with Poe and his works (e.g., music and film). Too often, they are not invited to participate directly in scholarly research related to pop culture. This book foregrounds their voices, allowing them to answer specific, vital questions: When did they first learn about Poe? Who introduced them to him? What were the circumstances? Which stories, poems, or other writings by Poe resonate with them? Why do they feel a connection to him? How do they integrate Poe into their own work? Writers of poetry, detective fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories along with actors, visual artists, musicians, tour guides, teachers, and many others reflect on how Poe has influenced their careers. These testimonies will entertain readers as they discover the many reasons for The Enduring Fascination with Edgar Allan Poe"--

Inspired by the compelling works of the influential author come more than 100 choice illustrations. Brilliant color and crisp black-and-white images include scenes from "The Raven," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Gold-Bug," and other stories and poems. Drawn from rare sources, they form an extraordinary gallery of imaginative interpretations.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

Greed and guilt, near-indecipherable codes, murder plots born of madness--these motifs drive the best modern mysteries, but they are rooted in the early nineteenth century and the carefully constructed fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe's methods of storytelling and suspense remain relevant, reappearing in detective novels and on screens large and small. This work examines a wide selection of today's mystery and thriller novels, films, television programs, and video games to explore Poe's ongoing influence on popular entertainment. Authors such as Michael Connelly, Stieg Larsson and Dennis Lehane, television shows like The Closer and Dexter, and movies from Laura and Vertigo to Shutter Island and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all receive attention. The popularity of Poe's narratives in these contemporary guises is testimony to his visionary genius. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

This work explores Edith Wharton's career-long concern with a 19th-century visual culture that limited female artistic agency and expression. Wharton repeatedly invoked the visual arts as a medium for revealing the ways that women's bodies have been represented (as passive, sexualized, infantalized, sickly, dead). Well-versed in the Italian masters, Wharton made special use of the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly its penchant for producing not portraits of individual women but instead icons onto whose bodies male desire is superimposed.