One hundred and sixty-five years ago on October 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died a mysterious death. Christopher P. Semtner, curator of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA, offers 13 facts about the circumstances surrounding his untimely demise.


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(Photo: Edgar Allan Poe Museum)


The breadth of Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on our culture is incalculable.
He invented the detective story, contributed to the development of both science fiction and the horror genre, and wrote about the only American poem anybody knows—certainly the only one popular enough to have an NFL team named after it.

His aesthetic and themes have influenced such cultural figures as Salvador Dali, Charles Baudelaire, and Alfred Hitchcock, who credited Poe’s works with inspiring him to make suspense films. A century and a half after his death, Poe still makes appearances on television shows like The Following and South Park as well as the upcoming movies The Tell-Tale Heart starring Rose McGowan and Stonehearst Asylum with Kate Beckinsale and Michael Caine. In addition to numerous Poe societies (including ones in Denmark and the Czech Republic), there are museums devoted to him in Richmond, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the Bronx. Opened in 1922, the Poe Museum in Richmond boasts the world’s largest collection of Poe’s personal items and memorabilia.