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      A Question of “Character”: Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of “Edgar Allan Poe”
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      Chapter

      A Question of “Character”: Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of “Edgar Allan Poe”

      DOI link for A Question of “Character”: Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of “Edgar Allan Poe”

      A Question of “Character”: Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of “Edgar Allan Poe” book

      A Question of “Character”: Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of “Edgar Allan Poe”

      DOI link for A Question of “Character”: Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of “Edgar Allan Poe”

      A Question of “Character”: Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of “Edgar Allan Poe” book

      ByWilliam Pannapacker
      BookRevised Lives

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      Edition 1st Edition
      First Published 2003
      Imprint Routledge
      Pages 16
      eBook ISBN 9780203497845
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      ABSTRACT

      ON 9 NOVEMBER 1848, NOT LONG BEFORE HIS DEATH, EDGAR ALLAN POE found himself seated uncomfortably in a heavy armchair, the back of his head braced by an iron ring, his hands clenching the arms of the chair so as to avoid the slightest movement. Overhead, a huge glass plate tilted below an open skylight, bathing him in an eerie blue light. It was the “operating room” of Samuel Masury and S.W.Hartshorn, daguerreotypists in Providence, Rhode Island; around their gallery hung silvery images of generals, politicians, and other notables. Aware of the mysterious aura of his craft, the daguerreotypist manipulated his instrument, while Poe, possibly hungover from recent drinking and tremulous from a nearly suicidal dose of laudanum taken four days earlier, struggled to remain absolutely still. The tension and pain of this moment showed clearly on his face; Poe’s fiancé, the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, would later call the image that resulted the “Ultima Thule” (Figure 11).

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