has any one heard of the tale the last leaf, and did poe write it

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2002

Answers

William Sydney Porter, better known by his pseudonym, O. Henry, wrote "The Last Leaf," not Edgar Allan Poe. Poe died thirteen years before Porter's birth, so they were not contemporaries.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2002

Another American poet, contemporary to Poe, did really write a poem with the title "The Last Leaf", viz. Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD, the author of the well-known humorous "Autocrat's" later series. This poet was also professor of Anatomy. Poe appreciated deeply Holmes's Poetical Works, and gave a bright prosodical analysis and commentary of those lines ("The Last Leaf") in his essay "Notes upon English Verse" he wrote for J. R. Lowell's Magazine, "The Pioneer", March, 1843 (please, check this, for I give it from memory). You can easily find this Holmes's poem in any good anthology. Perhaps by trying Google too... There remains a big job, never accomplished, to my knowledge, about literary relationship between Poe and Holmes, your own one, perhaps? Yours sincerely, Raven's Shade (Belgium).

-- Anonymous, May 13, 2002