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0425217825 From Publishers Weekly The author of Edgar winner Teller of Tales now recounts the story [...]
0425217825 From Publishers Weekly The author of Edgar winner Teller of Tales now recounts the story of Manhattan tobacco store clerk Mary Rogers, a mysterious beauty whose posse of admirers made her a minor celebrity in 1841 in various newspapers' society pages. The discovery that year of her mutilated corpse fueled a public outcry and a newspaper circulation war, as well as a fictional magazine serial by Edgar Allan Poe featuring his famous detective Dupin speculating on the murder of working-class Parisian "Marie Rog? t." Poe rightly deduced that Mary wasn't a victim of the gang violence that plagued New York City in the absence of an effective police presence. But he came late to the accepted theory that Mary had died of a botched abortion and had to tweak his final installment to maintain his and Dupin's reputations. Although Stashower's account bogs down in comparisons of Poe's revisions of the Rog? t manuscript, it's a generally absorbing account of the birth of the modern detective story. The sordid details of Mary Rogers's stunted life pale in comparison with Poe's own love-starved childhood, self-destructive tidal wave of alcoholism, poverty and rants against publishers and rivals; Poe's genius and literary legacy are hauntingly drawn here. (Oct. 5) Copyright? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The Washington Post The death of Mary Rogers remains one of the great unsolved murders in American history. The bruised and beaten body of the 20-year-old woman was discovered in the Hudson River along the Hoboken, N.J., shoreline on July 28, 1841. A cord wrapped around her throat, her torn clothing, and marks resembling a man's thumb on her neck convinced authorities that she was the victim of a violent assault. Within hours, New York's newspapers erupted in an explosion of lurid speculation and sexual sensationalism. A host of suspects was rounded up over the ensuing months, including two suitors, but no one was ever convicted of the crime. A year later, a dying and delirious innkeeper claimed that Rogers had perished from a botched abortion at her establishment. Her son had disposed of the body. Although the innkeeper's confession was riddled with inconsistencies, her story became the standard explanation, primarily because it served as the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Rog? t." Poe was the offspring of actors, abandoned by his father and adopted by the wealthy Allan family of Richmond, Va. Poe's volatile personality and his adoptive father's strict mores generated more than a few heated conflicts; they ultimately culminated in Poe's disinheritance. Poe proved to be his own worst enemy, dropping out of the University of Virginia and West Point. These and other failures were shaped in part by his repeated battles with alcoholism. Even when his writing career started to ascend, this pattern of self-destruction continually appeared, costing him many friends and numerous opportunities. To make matters worse, he married his 13-year-old cousin, whom he adored; in short time, she contracted tuberculosis. Her slow, agonizing death only deepened Poe's depression. In the midst of all this, he exploited the frenzy surrounding Rogers's death by attempting to solve her murder in a three-part article in Ladies' Companion during the winter of 1842-43. Daniel Stashower, the author of an acclaimed biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, uses Rogers and Poe to weave a compelling narrative of antebellum New York. Although the two protagonists never knew each other, their lives and postmortem histories intersected in surprising ways. Rogers worked in John Anderson's cigar emporium, a place popular with numerous writers and journalists who worked nearby along Nassau and Ann Streets. Here Rogers interacted with Poe's literary associates, writers from the penny press, flash weeklies and sporting papers. Most important, she became their object of affection and admiration. She...
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