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Jan 14 2009

Philly Victorious Over Baltimore And Boston In Great Poe Debate—Just Prior To Author's 200th Birthday Celebration

New Exhibition At Edgar Allan Poe House Highlights Year-long Series Of Events

Just days before literary great Edgar Allan Poe’s 200th birthday on January 19, 2009, Philadelphia can finally claim Poe as its own. After a friendly two-year feud, Poe scholars from Philadelphia (Ed Pettit), Baltimore (Jeff Jerome) and Boston (Paul Lewis) debated this subject last evening at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the audience decided that Pettit made the best case for the author, who wrote some of his greatest works—“The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”—in Philadelphia.

With many Philly sites and attractions celebrating the historic birthday, there’s no better time to honor the author’s literary legacy and there’s no better place to do it than at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, where a new exhibition, Edgar Allan Poe: The Many Sides of Genius, opens on January 17, 2009. Set in the house where Poe wrote “The Black Cat” and dozens of other eerily classic works, the exhibition features personal papers and manuscripts which reveal a life that held as many twists and turns as the detective novel genre he invented.

For more information on all of the Poe happenings in Philadelphia, visit gophila.com/poe.

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Edgar Allan Poe National Historical Site

Edgar Allan Poe National Historical Site

The Edgar Allan Poe National Historical Site in Philadelphia is where the short story master and poet wrote such classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “To Helen.” ...

Credit: Photo by R. Kennedy for GPTMC

Tags: History, Museums & Attractions