The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #131271   Message #2960845
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
08-Aug-10 - 08:35 PM
Thread Name: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist?
Subject: RE: BS: Was Poe a pro-slavery racist?
Still guesswork in some of what H.L. Poe wrote. Uncertain as to whether he said Reynolds or something else.
Neilson Poe, writing to Mrs Clemm in 1849, just after Poe's death, says that hospital staff told him that Poe was too excitable to be seen, but then was notified in a day or two that Poe was much better; but on Sunday he was told that Poe was dead.
[This may fit with a brain tumor or brain injury, but this is just speculation on my part].
Neilson Poe wrote that Poe's trunk and clothes could not be found, and suggests a possible robbery.
Poe's body was followed to the grave by Neilson Poe, the Clemms, Dr. Snodgrass, etc. so tales of a hasty burial in an unmarked grave are wrong. His body was moved a couple of times to what is now his resting place.

There is much detail in the following biography- Part is online, google books.

See Edgar Allen Poe, A Critical Biography, by Arthur Hobson uinn, 1941 and reprints, 809 pp., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.