Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Edgar Allen Poe (for Edgar Allan Poe)

Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both.

Poe is most famous for his poetry (The Raven) and short stories (The Masque of the Red Death), but the horror writer was also once an aspiring playwright. His only play, the tragedy Politian, was poorly received, and Poe quickly returned to shorter works.

If you did a double take upon reading the play’s title, I can assure you, Politian is not a typo for Politician—it is the name of the protagonist. The author’s name, however, frequently causes troubles for catalogers, with Allan often misspelled as Allen—this is a high probability typo on the Ballard list, and has over 1000 hits in Worldcat.

Leanne Olson
(Raven image from animals.howstuffworks.com)

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