I seriously dropped the ball, sword-brothers. I missed the one-hundredth and seventy-fifth anniversary of the day when—in the lonesome October—Edgar Allan Poe mysteriously passed beyond this mortal coil. The anniversary of such a literary titan shall not go unrecognized, albeit belatedly.

Being written at the last minute, this post will not be the best-rendered in my corpus. I will hit some highlights and will point out some things as they occur to me. A tattered and bedraggled tribute, perhaps, but a tribute nonetheless.

The first Poe blog entry on the DMR Books blog was published in January of 2018. It was concerned with "The Fall of the House of Usher" and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. I'm still proud of it:

“Two Classics for Poe's Birthday”

Award-winning author, Christopher Conlon, soon followed that up with "Why Poe?".

"Poe and Cosmic Horror" was a reply to one of the numerous Secret Kings out there in the Interwebz who think they are just a little bit smarter than the rest of us, but don't like to back up their snark.

Christopher Conlon took up the gauntlet with his excellent blog post, “A Whole Atmosphere and Method”: Cosmic Horror in Poe’s “Shadow: A Parable”.

M.C. Tuggle looked at one of Poe's psychological suspense classics with this blog entry:

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial”

There were plenty of other DMR Blog posts by various talented bloggers. All of them can be found here:

DMR Books: Edgar Allan Poe

As far as any 'new' insights from yours truly...

I pointed out in my very first EAP post that The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym could quite easily qualify as the first science-fiction adventure novel written by an American. It laid the foundations for Verne, Doyle and Burroughs. It still doesn't get the credit it deserves.

I think that Poe’s role as the progenitor of cosmic horror has gained traction. By no means do I take any personal credit for this. I do think that the DMR Books blog, overall, has helped to strengthen the case.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the earliest Forefathers of Sword-and-Sorcery. He influenced most of the later Forefathers and his dark hand is almost everywhere discernible except in the De Campian lineage of the S&S genre.

Without a doubt, Poe's works have inspired some great art. As a DMR Books blog bonus, I'll toss in a few examples.

Arthur Rackham crafted some worthy illustrations of Poe’s works. Here are two:

Two great Poe illustrations by Harry Clarke.

Bernie Wrightson’s painting for “The Premature Burial”.