Why a Booktrail?
1840s: A mystery based on true facts but with a large sprinkling of artistic license which makes a tale about one of the most mysterious writers very very intriguing!
Mrs Poe
What you need to know before your trail
If you have ever wondered what it would go back in time and meet a famous writer before he became famous – then wonder no more. This novel about Edgar Allan Poe and Mrs Poe is as unique as it is intriguing. It’s 1845 New York. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven has just been published. Frances (Fanny) Osgood is also a poet (had published children’s books including the mention in the novel of ‘Puss in Boots’) but has been abandoned by her husband and so is struggling to support herself. She meets Poe at one of his many readings around the city and they soon start a relationship.
But the two women in Poe’s life prove to be his undoing.
Travel Guide
The novel takes place over the winter of 1845 to the winter of 1846 in New York’s Greenwich Village. Not only does the author keep true to Poe’s life in terms of his poems and stories but she writes about the wider setting of the world of newspapers and publishing at that time.
Poe’s house
1845’s New York was where Edgar Allan Poe mastered his craft and became well known in the society of the time but was also a very temperamental and private man and the way in which he moves around the city, speaks to his readers and hides behind his persona is fascinating and creepy in equal measure. The Poe cottage where Virgina Poe died – now in the Bronx at 2640 Grand Concourse is a must see to immerse yourself fully into the Poe time and place
Greenwich village and the Bronx
Lower Manhattan are the areas of the city brought to gothic life. Many sites linked to Poe are now literary highlights in the city that never sleeps. Which is ironic since if you read one of his novels, chances are you won’t be able to sleep. Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven is heavily referenced in the book. There is a house very much like the Bartlett’s (where Frances looks out of the rosette window) but the highlight of any visit to Edgar Allan Poe’s world has to be the last cottage he lived in between 1846–49 in the Bronx area of New York as it’s where you can see period furnishings & exhibits on his life.
Streetview Maps
A ) Waverly Place - Miss Lynch lives here.
B) NY - Edgar Allan Poes Cottage
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
What is particularly interesting in this novel is the fact that it is written from the perspective of Frances Osgood and not Mrs. Poe, Virginia Poe, as would be expected. I didn’t know a lot about any of these truelife characters and had only read one book of Edgar Allan Poe. However this made the book more intriguing as it made me want to find out about him and the women in his life.
The language of the book not to mention the painstaking research that the author Lynn Cullen has carried out shines from every page. Yet this book has a surprise up behind its sleeve. The title is misleading for a very good reason –It’s not a simple love story. It’s not just about the writing of Mr Poe but his life and times and it’s a complicated in nature yet easy to read insight into the life of a great writer.
There are lots of snippets of Poe’s and Osgood’s poetry sprinkled throughout which adds to the literary setting brilliantly. Speaking of which, the changing seasons of Greenwich Village are stunning and rich in texture and you can see the changes running across every page.
Where Next?
