The Poe Letters

Following Edgar Allan Poe’s death in 1849, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Maria Clemm, was persuaded to name Rufus Wilmot Griswold as Poe’s literary executor. The two men had famously disliked each other, but Griswold promised Mrs. Clemm a share of the royalties from the collection of Poe’s works that he envisioned, a thing that overcame any misgivings she might have had. Griswold prefaced the four volume collection with a memoir intended to forever blackened Poe’s name. The Poe Letters is a collection of narratives and letters of nine women who all knew Poe and cooperated in efforts to redeem his character from Griswold’s disparaging biography. While all nine women were very real, The Poe Letters is a work of fiction that provides insights into these women’s relationships with Poe, with each other, and with a young army officer, Edward Gayle, who sought to understand Griswold’s motive. Thirty years and nearly a hundred and fifty letters later, Gayle uncovers the Griswold was only the messenger. The real assailant was Poe’s rival for the title America’s greatest poet.