![]() ![]() The first published account of Poe’s last days came from Rufus Griswold, a Philadelphia editor and critic, whose biographical essay “Memoir of the Author” appeared in an 1850 collection of Poe’s works. Nobody knows what happened to Poe between the morning of September 27, when he left Richmond, Virginia, for a business trip to New York City, and October 3, when a printer named Joseph Walker encountered him at Gunner’s Hall and summoned help. ![]() The Raven is hardly the first wild story to spring up around Poe’s death, though for years his biographers indulged their imaginations as much as he ever did. The record shows that Poe turned up in Baltimore not on a park bench on October 7 but in a building called Gunner’s Hall on October 3, and clung to life for four days before he gave up the ghost at age 40. Director James McTeigue fades in on a close-up of the title bird, perched on a tree branch above the ailing Poe (John Cusack), and the eerie image is typical of a movie that favors macabre atmosphere over established fact (or even common sense). After a mysterious disappearance, the opening title informs us, Poe was found delirious on a park bench in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. The Raven, a highly enjoyable piece of gothic hokum, purports to reveal the truth about Edgar Allan Poe’s last days, but it begins with a statement that’s patently false. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation. ![]()
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