Edgar Allen Poe - c.1845

Edgar Allen Poe
Edgar Poe was born in Boston in 1809, and lived his first years in Virginia where his father was a traveling actor. Both parents died when he was three, and he was taken in by a wealthy planter named John Allen, who re-christened him Edgar Allen Poe. At 17, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia. But within a year, Poe gambled himself in to serious debt, which his stepfather refused to cover. Poe withdrew from UVA and joined the army.

That's when his life became interesting. After two years, he was admitted to West Point, and then court-martialed and expelled a year later. He became a writer, loosely attached to the staffs of various newspapers in Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. In 1836, at age 27, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin . In 1844, he settled down in Greenwich Village at a house we'll pass by on our tour. One year later, Poe would finally reach the stardom he craved with the publication of "The Raven.” In 1849, he would die on unknown causes while visiting Baltimore.

 

 

Mike Wallace interviews Jack Kerouac at the Gaslight Cafe - 1960

3 Generations of Artists
Poe began a artisan tradition in the Village that would last up until the present day. Mingled among the bars and cafes - the Minetta Tavern, Cafe Wha, the Black Rabbit, the Gaslight Cafe, and dozens of others - are three generations of American culture.

Beginning in the 20's and 30's: Hemingway, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, Eugene O'Neill, Max Bodenheim, Theodore Dreiser, Marcel Duchamps, Edward Hopper, Gertrude Vanderbilt, and others.

In the 40's & 50's, it became time of the 'beats,' huddling together in the protective confines of the Village in midst of post-war, suburban conformism. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Gregory Corso, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Lawrence Ferlinghetti . . . .

And then on the heals of the beats, their folk music and their blues, came the 60's generation. Counter-culture went mainstream, and musicians became pop-idols: Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Peter, Paul & Mary - they all began in the Village. Our tour will show you where.