PS2618.N-50102
813′.3—dc21

 

 

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Leslie Fiedler,
who got me started

 

—R.K.

INTRODUCTION

It could well be argued that the idea for the first episode in Edgar Allan Poe’s great novel of adventure, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, came from a newspaper.

Poe was a devoted reader of reviews of his work. And as the editor of Richmond’s monthly Southern Literary Messenger , he included reviews and extracts of reviews of the Messenger in a supplement in the January, April, and July issues of 1836. Notably, he regularly featured in the supplements reviews from the Norfolk Beacon and the Norfolk Herald. As a professional journalist, he could not well have missed these newspapers of a neighboring city. Our recognizing Poe’s reading in the Beacon and the Herald in 1836 is important, for we can see in that reading the beginnings of Pym. Poe would have encountered in the Beacon, on February 18, 1836—one day after a very positive review of the February issue of the Messenger—and in the Herald, on February 19, 1836—adjacent to a highly favorable review of that same issue—a first-hand account of the destruction in a storm at sea of a Norfolk vessel named the Ariel, and of the escape and rescue of two men who had been on board. In all likelihood, Poe would have been reminded of James Fenimore Cooper’s Ariel in The Pilot, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s boat Ariel, John Milton’s Ariel in Paradise Lost, and William Shakespeare’s fairy Ariel in The Tempest (a part once played by Poe’s mother, Eliza). But it was the Norfolk newspaper account that appears to have been the immediate prompt, and it was that account that most closely anticipates the events of chapter 1 of Poe’s novel: the destruction of the Ariel and the rescue of two males who had been on board. The story had great possibilities for a general audience: as a work in the public mind, it could perhaps introduce a popular sea narrative, one characterized by what Poe termed “the potent magic of verisimilitude” (the use of specific detail to promote belief and heighten effect). It could lead to a work comparable to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which Poe had so highly praised in the January 1836 issue of the Messenger. Furthermore, the newspaper account of the destruction of the Ariel had great possibilities for a literary audience: it could conceivably suggest another story altogether. Addressing both the general audience and the literary audience in Pym, Poe sought the resounding success that had so far eluded him.

 

Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, to Eliza Arnold Poe and David Poe Jr., both actors. Edgar had an older brother, Henry, and, soon, a younger sister, Rosalie. David Poe Jr., a performer of limited talent, and given to drink, abandoned his family in New York City in the spring or summer of 1811. The children’s beloved mother, Eliza, a much celebrated ingenue, became sick in Richmond and died on December 8, 1811. Henry went to live with his grandpar ents in Baltimore and Rosalie with the Mackenzies of Richmond; Edgar was taken in—but never adopted—by John and Frances Allan, also of Richmond.

Obvious difficulties did not develop for a while. Several people who had known Edgar when he was a young boy remember him to have been “a lovely little fellow . . . charming every one by his childish grace, vivacity, and cleverness.” In London, where John Allan had taken his family so that he could expand his import/export business, the attentive foster father wrote in 1818, “Edgar is a fine Boy and reads Latin sharply.” While his schoolmaster considered him spoiled and mischievous, Allan continued to state that “Edgar is a very fine Boy & a good Scholar.” And when John Allan returned to Richmond in 1820, having suffered business reverses, he inquired of Edgar’s new teacher Joseph H. Clarke whether a book of his foster son’s poems (written to various girls in the city) should be published. (Impressed with the boy’s imagination, Clarke nonetheless recommended that, to avoid inflating Edgar’s already high opinion of himself, Allan should not have the book published. The poems have since been lost.)

Edgar continued to distinguish himself as a student, and showed skills as an athlete, as well—as a runner, leaper, boxer, and swimmer. But he was, in all likelihood, becoming aware that his status among his peers was uncertain, since he was the son of actors and dependent on the goodwill of the Allans. Also, he longed for the mother he had lost, and he sought maternal sympathy in his foster mother, Frances Allan, and his friend Rob Stanard’s mother, Jane Stanard. Mrs. Allan was frequently ill, however, and Mrs. Stanard, though very responsive to the boy, soon died. Edgar was distraught and apparently moody at home—“miserable sulky & ill-tempered,” John Allan wrote. Edgar’s relationship with his foster father worsened—especially when this son of actors defied John Allan by joining the Thespian Society.

In the summer of 1825, Edgar had the second of two visits from his brother, Henry—a welcome interlude, surely.