Scott Peeples - "The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City" - Virtual Event

Scott Peeples will discuss The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City.

Presented in partnership with The American Writers Museum

Virtual event

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About the book: Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American magazines, living in the cities that produced them. Scott Peeples chronicles Poe’s rootless life in the cities, neighborhoods, and rooms where he lived and worked, exploring how each new place left its enduring mark on the writer and his craft. Poe wrote short stories, poems, journalism, and editorials with urban readers in mind. Poe’s urban mysteries and claustrophobic tales of troubled minds and abused bodies reflect his experiences living among the soldiers, slaves, and immigrants of the American city. Featuring evocative photographs by Michelle Van Parys, The Man of the Crowd challenges the popular conception of Poe as an isolated artist living in a world of his own imagination, detached from his physical surroundings. The Poe who emerges here is a man whose outlook and career were shaped by the cities where he lived, longing for a stable home.

About the author: Scott Peeples is a professor at the College of Charleston where he teaches a wide array of courses, with topics ranging from Gothicism to nineteenth-century American poetry to Bob Dylan. He has published extensively on Edgar Allan Poe and other nineteenth-century writers, most recently as co-editor of the Oxford Handbook to Edgar Allan Poe. Dr. Peeples served as Chair of the Department of English from 2012 to 2017, and is currently Vice President of the Southeastern American Studies Association.