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.

Happy Birthday to Benjamin Franklin! A common misconception many Americans make is that Mr. Franklin was a President of the US. Though it seems like it, and we have his face on some of our money, that is not true! He was never a President… just a typical Joe Schmo like you and me! Okay… perhaps not quite so typical as we are… In honor of this Renaissance Man’s birthday here are ten fun facts about this founding father!

Now that your holidays are over, it’s time to leave your dreams of sugarplums and fantasies in the past and get back to… reality. And who better to discover reality with than J.R.R. Tolkien!? After all, you know as well as we do that he detested his cult fantasy following and wished only to bring awareness to the Catholic church… right? Oh, no? Well then, allow us to enlighten you!

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. 

In his early twenties, Tolkien married Edith Bratt – a “childhood” sweetheart (in quotes because they met when Tolkien was 16 years old and Bratt 19, but “teen” sweethearts just sounds ridiculous). Shortly thereafter Tolkien was deployed to France to fight in the war. However, Tolkien was to count himself lucky (if you can call it so) as he suffered from so many infections and illnesses throughout his service that he was considered unfit for service and was often between hospitals and off-the-field duties. Upon his final return to England, all but one of his friends had perished in the war. 

After the war in 1920, Tolkien went to work (appropriately so) for the Oxford English Dictionary, then shortly thereafter became the youngest professor at the University of Leeds, taking up a post as Reader there. While working there, Tolkien produced his version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a medieval work that his involvement on would become the academic norm for decades to come. 

At the onset of World War II, Tolkien was approached by the British government and asked if he would consider working as a cryptographer and codebreaker in the Foreign Office, in the event of an emergency. Tolkien replied that he would be honored to do so, though it would turn out that his services would not be necessary. In 1945 Tolkien began his term as the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, a post he would remain at until his retirement in 1959. After retirement, Tolkien and Edith set-up house in Bournemouth, England, not only because Edith was delighted to live there, but because in the 1960s the counter-culture movement saw a rapid increase in interest in Tolkien’s fantasy work and his popularity began to be distressing, with unwanted visits and phone calls, and the rise of a cult-following. Family being the main interest of the couple, they relocated. Truthfully, I feel as though I cannot do re-working Humphry Carpenter’s statement on the Tolkien’s relationship justice, so I copy it here:

“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. 

(But sorry, there is definitely still a cult following, there is really probably no way of getting around that by now.)