Category Archives: Dear Edgar

Dear Edgar 39 ~ The Pit and the Pendulum

It is a perfect tale in that respect, in that it does exactly what Poe set out to do. It gets under your skin, and crawls about… Continue reading

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Dear Edgar 28 ~ The Mystery of Marie Roget

‘Based on true events’ is a cliche, a trope so common we pay it no mind. Writers have been using it for years… In fact it is not unreasonable to say they have been using it since the autumn of 1842 when our own Dear Edgar dipped his toes in that particular well. Continue reading

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Dear Edgar 37 ~ The Landscape Garden

the Landscape garden, a story by Dear Edgar that is not exactly worth your time… with an explanation of why that is the case. and an expose on 1840’s women’s magazines Continue reading

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Dear Edgar 35 ~ The Oval Portrait

On occasion, when you spend time in the company of dead authors, you come across an obscure little story that inspired something far more well known. Occasionally the original feels like it is a pastiche of the more famous work. … Continue reading

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The post-con collapse

Working a convention is exhausting. I am not alone in this. Almost every author I know has much the same story. Conventions are draining, much I suspect because writers tend not to be the kind of people who are naturally … Continue reading

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Dear Edgar 30 ~ The Island of the Fay

I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. Continue reading

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Dear Edgar 29 ~ A Descent into the Maelström

Author C Clark, The Playboy model, the whirlpool , and Edgar Alan Poe Continue reading

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Dear Edgar 27: The Man of the Crowd

 It was well said of a certain German book that “er lasst sich nicht lesen” –it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their … Continue reading

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Dear Edgar 16 ~ The Business Man

At home, on the shelf above my desk, just to the left of the raven black quill and owl tormented ink stand, and in front of the leather bound scroll case of dubious origin, I have a porcelain phrenology skull, … Continue reading

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Dear Edgar #22 The Fall of the House of Usher

The themes of three earlier stories in particular are each echoed in this story, those being Morella, Berenice and Ligeia. Which is not to say that Edgar was obsessed with putting female characters into soporific states that seem death like, decaying, and wasting away, but it is a theme that comes up time and time again in the early tales. What is odd is that these themes were so prevalent before the wasting disease that would take his wife from him not many years later was diagnosed. Equally the male characters in all these stories react to these tragedies with obsession and madness that echoes how the death of Victoria was to plunge him into a deep alcohol fuelled depression and began his own downward spiral to an early grave.

Occasionally life imitates art in dreadful ways. Continue reading

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