To Octavia

by Edgar Allan Poe

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lovely short little poem. This is the kind of stuff I love by him!

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This original poem, unsigned, is written in Edgar Poe’s hand in the album of Octavia Walton, to whom it is addressed. She was the daughter of George Walton, Secretary of West Florida under Governor William P. Duval. Her grandfather was Governor George Walton of Georgia, who had signed the Declaration of Independence. After her marriage to M. LeVert they built Château LeVert, near Augusta, where she was a celebrated hostess. The date of the poem, “May the 1st, 1827,” is in Octavia’s hand. The poem has always been known as Edgar Poe’s. He also wrote in the album eight lines (in quotation marks) from the first chapter of Voltaire’s Princesse de Babylone." Poe, Edgar Allan. 1969. “To Octavia,” The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. I: Poems. Edited by Thomas Oliver Mabbott. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. (16)

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes one think of the potential danger that comes from allowing someone else to take hold of your heart. It gives them the chance to crush it and take away all that makes one happy.

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have arranged my takeaway thoughts into a haiku:

"Some forms of love beg:
Is it love, or obsession
Boiled to a sweet ache?"

[Amelia Bujar · Rating 5 out of 5]

FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...

This poem is a lovely short poem. Its dark but also pretty sweet in a way.

This one makes you think of the potential danger that comes from allowing someone else to take hold of your heart. Because it gives them a chance to crush it and take away all that makes one happy.

The writing style is pretty dark but the theme gives it a sweet spotlight. The whole writing style is typical to Edgar Allan Poe.

[Nicole]

Watch the livestream discussion
https://youtu.be/92439OevRU0

[fallenruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

"but octavia, do not strive to rob
my heart of all that soothes its pain"

[London]

Poem

[sheislethal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this poem, I read it every day