The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe: Nevermore in Baltimore [Hardcover]

Occurring in a time of primitive medicine and inconsistent record-keeping, Poes death has become one of the enduring mysteries of American literature. David F. Gaylins book marks the first attempt to offer a comprehensive and balanced study of this historical event. After chronicling the circumstances that may have contributed to the poets death, the book examines key details about the story. It traces Poes movements and personal encounters before also exploring how Poe was handled and treated by others who attempted to come to his aid. Proceeding with the liveliness of a detective story, the discussion sheds new light on these events, and it offers new information about the burial of Poes body and the subsequent relocations of his tomb. With the addition of supplementary reference materials including a register of formally proposed causes of death, a timeline of relevant events, and a map of Poes final movements in Baltimore, this book is an essential resource for both scholars and general readers seeking answers to the mystery of Poes death.David F. Gaylinis president of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and author ofEdgar Allan Poes Baltimore(2015).

Gaylin assumes that attempts to solve the riddle of Poe's death confront two mysteries: how did he come to be discovered in a tavern in East Baltimore, and what illness or condition actually brought him down? (p. 3). No suspense is ruined if the most likely illness or condition involves alcohol, which Poe did not handle well. Readers still debate the 42 possible causes of death adduced by Gaylin in his endearingly obsessive appendix. By all accounts, Poe deteriorated after his wife's death in January 1847. Returning from Virginia in 1849, he was found incoherent in Baltimore, then a hotbed of criminality (p. 89). Because Poe never recovered, the mystery of his death endures, complicated by the work of Dr. John Moran, who oversaw the hospital in which Edgar Allan Poe perished (p.