The Edgar Allan Poe Review

As is attested to by the abundance of statues, museums, and national historic sites dedicated to Poe along the eastern coast of the United States of America, a variety of cities claim him as one of their native sons. Due to the peripatetic nature of his editorial career, Poe left his literary mark on Richmond, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City as he sought stable employment and an opportunity to own and edit a journal of his own. To this familiar list of Poe’s literary locales Christopher Byrd Downey seeks to add Charleston, South Carolina, as a significant site for Poe lovers, although perhaps not for Poe scholars.

Mr. Downey, or “Captain Byrd” as he identifies himself on his web page,¹ is a Virginian by birth who, like Poe, eventually found himself living in and around Charleston. Downey’s previously published works Stede Bonnet: Charleston’s Gentleman Pirate (2012) and Charleston and the Golden Age of Piracy (2013) both examine Charleston’s early eighteenth-century history as a focal point of South Atlantic maritime piracy. Like these previous works, Edgar Allan Poe’s Charleston is published by the History Press, an imprint of Arcadia Publishing with a heavy emphasis on local history books aimed at a nonspecialist audience. This focus on the general reader is emphasized by the lack of footnotes or any parenthetical citations in the texts as well as the presence of numerous well-selected and well-reproduced images capturing Poe, figures relevant to Poe’s life (Elizabeth Arnold Poe, John Allan, Rufus Griswold), and Charleston landmarks (the Gold-Bug Tree, the Unitarian Churchyard, Fort Moultrie).

The book is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1, which is particularly strong, offers a detailed account of Elizabeth Arnold’s theatrical career in [End Page 75] Charleston, New York City and, finally, Richmond. Chapters 2 and 3 offer a brief biography of Poe with an especial emphasis on his time in the army at Fort Moultrie—located just outside Charleston—and possible Charleston influences on the composition of “The Gold-Bug.” Chapter 4 offers an overview of early twentieth-century efforts in Charleston to establish a local connection to the heroine of Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” Downey closes his study with two chapters examining Pe’s status as a Southern author as well as the inability to decisively pin Poe to any one geographic locale.

Downey is at his best when digging into forgotten corners of Charleston history. As mentioned above, the opening chapter recounting the Charleston theatrical scene at the end of the eighteenth century is full of copious details regarding the stage career of Poe’s mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe. Downey adds welcome depth to the picture of Elizabeth Poe, which so often begins with Richard Mordeci’s observations regarding her November 1811 convalescence in Richmond, and ends with her death just prior to the Richmond Theatre fire of December 26, 1811.² The attention to the theatrical scenes in Charleston and Richmond at the turn of the nineteenth century will undoubtedly be appreciated by scholars of early American theater looking to complement the familiar histories of early plays and players in New York City and Boston.

After such a strong beginning, the book’s focus on a general interest read-ership comes to the fore with two chapters conveying a brief overview of Poe’s life from birth through the publication of “The Balloon-Hoax” in April 1844. The information in these chapters will be familiar to anyone with more than a passing knowledge of Poe biography, and one suspects that the same people will be frustrated by the lack of any notes referencing the primary and secondary sources consulted by Downey in crafting this narrative. At the same time, the extra attention paid to Poe’s time at Fort Moultrie and the intersections between the real and imagined landscapes of Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, nicely serve to fill in some gaps in an underdocumented passage in Poe’s life.

This...