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In Search of the Rarest Book in American Literature:

Literary Hub (Bradford Morrow)

2024

Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827) is Edgar Allan Poe’s first publication. He was 18 at the time and had left the home of his foster parents in Richmond, Virginia, https://www.careexperienceandculture.com/master/edgar-allan-poe-(writer)

Nobody would be much interested in rare copies of Tamerlane and Other Poems, says Bradford Morrow in this LitHub article https://lithub.com/in-search-of-the-rarest-book-in-american-literature-edgar-allan-poes-tamerlane/ if Poe had not gone on to:

“… invent the modern detective story (think “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter”), revolutionize the Gothic genre with tales like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” pen triumphs of supernatural horror like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and write the classic macabre poem “The Raven,” which many of us tried to memorize as kids—”

But because that is what Edgar Allan Poe did, Tamerlane – known as the Black Tulip - is now of interest to “booksellers, archivists, collectors, and Poe scholars around the world.”

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