The people in his story

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OK i know that Edgar used people in his real life, in his story, but i need to know who those people are, and how they relate to his life.

-- Anonymous, May 28, 2001

Answers

Though experience I am sure colored some of his characters, rarely does he seriously copy a whole personage, even himself, in one of his characters. Humor is another matter of course and when he uses names they often are just to tease an acquaintance. On a personal note I have been trying to track down the Vredenburghs whose name he used in the Pym novel. That they existed with the names mentioned around the location where Poe lived, a lawyer approximately Poe's age, whose first baby (born during the writing of the novel)has the same name as the second Vredenburgh mentioned- is all I can guess at. I can only further guess that the prominence of Judge Vrendenburgh and the obscurity of the novel(and the death of their son peter in the Civil War)kept him silent I suppose.

Well, more importantly, there is something to be said perhaps for the lost loved ones subconsciously reappearing in names and dates throughout his tales and poems, lost loves(Ellen Royster, his wife Virginia). His parents, then stepmother, then older brother "Henry" Leonard had died when he was young. Ellen Royster, his first failed courtship, in particular inspired poems of a dead lost love, within a general category of such idealized subject matter with a more profound symbolic meaning.

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2001


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