Old St. Francis History Pub

Presented by Alastair Morley Jaques, Poe expert

In the autumn of 1849 Edgar Allan Poe, America’s most celebrated poet, critic, and literary innovator boarded the train from Richmond, Virginia to New York City. Poe never reached his destination. One week later, he was found, drunk, delirious, and obviously dying, in the city of Baltimore. In the days leading up to his death in a Baltimore hospital on October 7th, 1849, Poe never once regained his senses nor was he able to reveal anything as to how he had come to be in the state he was in.

Even before that last nail was in Poe’s coffin prior to his hasty burial in a Baltimore cemetery, speculation had already begun as to what had killed the author of The Raven and the inventor of the detective story. Those speculations have continued for more than a century and a half and, unlike Poe’s own tales, a brilliant resolution to the mystery has not been forthcoming.

Join Alastair Morley Jaques, who has played America’s dark master of the macabre and original literary bad boy on the stage for more than a decade, for a presentation of the documented historical facts about Poe’s final hours and a discussion of some of the leading theories that have been put forth by Poe scholars regarding the life, the legacy, and lugubrious last days of Edgar Allan Poe.

About the Speaker:

Actor, lecturer, and storyteller Alastair Morley Jacques studied Theatre Arts and American Literature at the Evergreen State College and the University of Oregon. He has appeared in a professional capacity in roles both Shakespearean and contemporary on stages all along the West Coast in addition to lending his talents to numerous radio and television commercials and voice-overs. His most frequent and celebrated role is as Edgar Allan Poe in his one-person show “An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe.” An avid reader and collector of the historically strange, eldritch, and arcane, he lives in Portland, Oregon where he spends much of his time in a bell tower overlooking a crypt and a columbarium.