Michael Powell, who lives in Eugene, Ore., and is an editor at Kinesiology Publications at the University of Oregon, has been a lifelong student of the works and life of Edgar Allan Poe.
"I did my dissertation on Poe and Emerson, who were core American Romantics and believed the world was what you make it to be," said Powell, in a telephone interview from his home the other day.
Over the years, Powell has been intrigued by the circumstances and discrepancies surrounding the death of Poe, who died in Baltimore on Oct. 7, 1849, and how many invented facts and accounts have been blindly accepted as true, even by established scholars.
"It has always been a topic of special interest. What happened to Poe is not a pretty picture. We wound up treating one of our best badly," Powell said. "He was a brilliant man, a real genius and underappreciated. He has been down-rated by many scholars for his views on democracy. And the story of what actually happened to him has largely been and remains unchallenged."
Powell's research culminated in Poe's Last Trip to Baltimore, a recently completed monograph.
It's been accepted that Poe, after taking an Old Bay Line steamer from Richmond, Va., landed in Baltimore, and then wandered about the city in a drunken stupor for several days, until being discovered in an East Baltimore saloon on Election Day.
"That's all very troubling and never made any sense. Poe was well-known in Baltimore, and I think it would have been difficult for him to wander about the city unnoticed," Powell said.
Actually, after arriving in the city on Oct. 2, 1849, according to Powell, Poe made his way to President Street Station, where he boarded the 9 a.m. train for Philadelphia, and a temporary freelance editing job.
Later, he planned to travel to New York City, in order to move Maria Clemm, his mother-in-law, and mother of his late wife, Virginia, back to Richmond.
While en route to Baltimore on the steamer Jewess, Powell writes, Poe entered the vessel's saloon and ordered a drink.
"Poe appears to have indulged in a drink, perhaps, as in the past, to treat what he called a `nervous attack,'" Powell writes. "This then had the well-known [to him] consequence of making him very ill."
The effects of the alcohol caught up with Poe, who was transferred to another train and returned to Baltimore.
"By one account," Powell writes, he was found "`lying in the baggage car insensible.'"
