We all know it, or at least part of it. You either learned it in school or you’ve heard it around Halloween-time… it doesn’t really matter how you know it, you just do. And no matter how you feel about it (good, bad, indifferent) you must admit… it’s a fan favorite the world over.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’re just talking about a poem. On this date 173 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven was first published. Let’s look at what this poem was and how it affected both the literary world and Poe’s life.
At the time when The Raven was published, Poe’s life held startlingly similar circumstances to the protagonist of his poem. Poe’s young wife, Virginia, was slowly succumbing to the fate of sufferers of tuberculosis. Poe knew well what would happen – having lost much of his family to the disease. In the poem, the protagonist agonizes over a lost love, and even asks the raven whether there is any “balm of Gilead” that could ease his suffering. He is rejected by the raven (you know, in the way where it is a raven rejecting you with the only word he seems to have memorized) and laments on his seemingly wasted life (as one does when a bird rejects you).
A fact we truly enjoy bringing up to all Poe fans at length is that part of his inspiration for this poem came from… none other than Charles Dickens! I mean, Poe may not have directly admitted this fact, but he did publish a review on Barnaby Rudge and mentioned the fact that the raven in the novel, “intensely amusing as it is, might have been made more than we now see it… Its croakings might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” How’s that for inspiration?!
Alright – well, enough fun facts about the poem itself. Let’s focus a bit on what might have been happening on this day so many years ago. The truth is that The Raven turned Poe into an instant celebrity – it was well received from the beginning, and prompted publishing house Wiley and Putnam to publish a book of Poe’s prose in June of that year, and a book of his poetry in November of 1845. Though the poem brought Poe very little financial success ($9-$15 is what Poe received for it at the start), the fact that it prompted the publication of his first book in five years was obviously a boon. Plus he had children following him in the streets flapping their arms and cawing until he would turn around and screech “Nevermore!” at them so that they would run away squealing. I mean, how much happiness could one man take?
So I know I promised that we would talk about how its writing influenced literature, but in all truthfulness, I have yet to see an article reflect at length on such an announcement. It drew an audience from all over the United States and abroad in England and Europe, where Poe became a household name. It sparked fear in the hearts of many – watching a depressed protagonist slowly lose his mind and be both the conveyor and interpreter of an ominous message delivered by an irritating feathered friend will do that to you. It was revered, accepted, and even sparked apathy and distaste by both civilians and other writers – much the same as every other piece of the written word that gets sent out to be eaten by us literary wolves. So what is it that The Raven had that was so singular?
It was written by a man with the prettiest handwriting I’ve ever seen, of course.
Enjoy.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3rd (yes, yes – we are one day late with this… so sue us!) 1892 in South Africa. Born to English parents, Ronald (as he was known) was followed by a brother just a couple years later. When he was only three years old, his mother took the sons on what was intended to be a long vacation in England to meet their family. While away, Ronald’s father took ill and passed away from rheumatic fever, and the Tolkien family, left without income, did not return to South Africa. His mother Mabel taught Ronald and his brother Hilary from home. Ronald showed an adept interest in languages early on, and was reading and writing around the age of four. His mother became a devout catholic in his early life, and when she passed away when Ronald was twelve years of age, he and Hilary became wards of her trusted advisor, catholic priest Father Francis. Francis would have a profound influence on Tolkien throughout his life.
During his teenage years, Tolkien and two of his female cousins had a unique pastime… making up languages. Their languages, Animalic, Nevbosh and Naffarin varied in complexity and drew their roots from Latin, which his mother taught him as a young boy. Tolkien eventually began attending Oxford, at first studying Classics but soon realizing that his interests and talents lay in studying the English language and literature. He graduated in 1915 with first-class honors, a rarity for the year as it was looked down upon for Tolkien to have completed his studies before enlisting as a soldier in World War I.
“Those friends who knew Ronald and Edith Tolkien over the years never doubted that there was deep affection between them. It was visible in the small things, the almost absurd degree in which each worried about the other’s health, and the care in which they chose and wrapped each other’s birthday presents; and in the large matters, the way in which Ronald willingly abandoned such a large part of his life in retirement to give Edith the last years in Bournemouth that he felt she deserved, and the degree in which she showed pride in his fame as an author. A principal source of happiness to them was their shared love of their family. This bound them together until the end of their lives, and it was perhaps the strongest force in the marriage. They delighted to discuss and mull over every detail of the lives of their children, and later their grandchildren.” Now if that doesn’t make you want to cry, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Edith passed away two years before Tolkien. While he lived those years pleasantly enough in very nice rooms provided him at Oxford and honored by the Queen in that time, Tolkien’s grandson Simon would go and visit his grandfather and Tolkien would speak of how he missed his wife and Simon would remark that he seemed “sad”. Tolkien is buried with his wife in Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford, wanting to be buried in countryside (not in London, etc.) as he disliked industrialization and favored a quieter, country life. These facts were not what you were expecting from the man famed for creating the destructive and warring, mystical and fantasy world of Middle-Earth, now were they? In any case, Happy Birthday to J.R.R. Tolkien! Your work is still remembered and revered today.
After a few adventures with his cousin, Drake spent much of the early 1570s living along the “Spanish Main” or the Panama Isthmus, attacking Spanish vessels and small settlements. During this time, fun fact, Drake climbed a tree on the Isthmus of Panama and looked out over the Pacific – being the first Englishman to ever behold the Pacific Ocean. Drake and his men eventually made it back to Plymouth, England, having captured much in Peruvian gold but having been forced to bury it along the way to avoid its recapture by the Spanish.
In 1577, Elizabeth I sent Drake (because of his “success” with the Isthmus raids) on an expedition to sail along the Pacific coast of the Americas. After one false start due to bad weather, the crew set final sail on the 13th of December, 1577. Drake set out with five ships (which soon became 6) and 164 men. The crew made it around Cape Horn, and went alongside the coast of South America pillaging and looting Spanish towns and ships along the way. Drake restocked and rested his ships on the Coast of California for a time, and then continued on to the Molucca islands in what is now known as Indonesia. Eventually Drake rounded the Cape of Good Hope – the southernmost tip in Africa, and made his way back to Plymouth, having circumnavigated the globe and made it around two of the most treacherous sailing spots in the world (both Capes) in just under three years.
This year the bar, being held in the same large room as the dinner, seemed to be a bit more of an intimate affair (which I rather enjoyed). The large table of donations for the Elizabeth Woodburn / ABAA Benevolent Fund raffle was overflowing – as usual with impressive selections of beverages, but with also some fun gift baskets and chocolates, 2018 SF Giants baseball tickets, etc., etc!
Crane was born on November 1st, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, the 14th child (of only 8 surviving children) to a clergyman and daughter of a clergyman. Crane began writing at an early age, and when he was eight years old he wrote his first surviving poem – “I’d Rather Have A-” – a poem about wanting a dog for Christmas! One year later he began formal schooling and completed two grades within a six week period. Throughout Crane’s education he was a slightly erratic student, if intelligent and somewhat popular. This could be put down to the fact that by the time Crane was a teen, quite a few members of his family (his father and siblings) were dead – leading to a very different childhood than his classmates.
In 1893 Crane became frustrated with stories written about the Civil War, stating “I wonder that some of those fellows don’t tell how they felt in those scraps. They spout enough of what they did, but they’re as emotionless as rocks.” Crane decided to write an account of a soldier in the war, and began work on what would become The Red Badge of Courage, Crane’s most beloved work to date. His story would be different from his contemporaries – for he wanted desperately to present a “psychological portrayal of fear” by describing a young man disillusioned by the harsh truths of war. He succeeded and a year later his novel began to be published in serial form by the Bacheller-Johnson Newspaper Syndicate. It was heavily edited for publication in the serial, though it did begin to cause a stir in its readers. Crane then worked on a book of poetry, which was published to large amounts of criticism due to his use of free verse, not then a common convention. Crane was not bothered by its unpopular reception – he was instead quite pleased that the book made “some stir” and caused a reaction of any sort. In 1895 Appleton published The Red Badge of Courage, the full chapters, in book form – and Crane became a household name overnight. The book was in the “top six on various bestseller lists around the country” for months after its publication. It even became popular abroad and was widely read in Great Britain as well. Crane was only 23 years old at the start of his fame.
Crane became a war correspondent alongside Taylor in the Greek-Turkish War of 1897, and then the Spanish-American War in 1898.
