On this day in New York · January 29, 1845
The Raven Makes Poe Famous
A poem Edgar Allan Poe had already sold for nine dollars ran as a favor in a New York newspaper, and by the next morning he was the most talked-about writer in the city.
The facts
- First printed with Poe's name
- New York Evening Mirror, January 29, 1845, as an advance copy
- Editor who introduced it
- Nathaniel Parker Willis of the Evening Mirror
- What Poe was paid
- $9 from The American Review, which had bought the poem before the Mirror printed it
- Reaction
- New Yorkers soon took to calling Poe by the nickname "The Raven"
On January 29, 1845, the New York Evening Mirror printed Edgar Allan Poe's poem 'The Raven' under his name, running it as an advance copy days before it was due to appear in The American Review, the magazine that had actually bought and paid for it. Mirror editor Nathaniel Parker Willis, a friend and booster of Poe's, introduced the poem to readers with an unusually confident sales pitch, and readers agreed with him. The poem spread fast through the city's papers and then across the Atlantic, turning a working journalist who was scraping by on magazine rates into a name strangers recognized. The fame never came with real money attached.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift
Nathaniel Parker Willis, introducing "The Raven" in the New York Evening Mirror, January 29, 1845
Source: Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore -
Your 'Raven' has produced a sensation, a fit o' horror, here in England.
Elizabeth Barrett, in a letter to Poe
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It's a very New York kind of fame story: one newspaper, one editor doing a friend a favor, and a broke writer became a household name overnight without ever seeing the money to match it.
Sources
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