The Poe Shadow

For more than a century, there have indeed been attempts to identify the "real" Dupin who inspired Poe's mystery tales. Auguste Duponte and the Baron Dupin are fictional but take their forms from the wide range of "Dupin" candidates who have been uncovered. This long list includes a French tutor named C. Auguste Dubouchet and a preeminent lawyer, André-Marie-Jean-Jacques Dupin.

Though many people have obsessively combed through the death of Poe in attempts to solve its mysteries, Quentin's quest is fictional. Still, his actions and some specific discoveries cha

Acknowledgments

This book owes so much to four people: first, to my literary agent and friend, Suza

Superb publishing professionals at my literary agency and publishing houses contributed to all facets of the process. At William Morris Agency, Jon Baker, Georgia Cool, Raffaella De Angelis, Alice Ellerby, Michelle Feehan, Tracy Fisher, Candace Fi

Thanks to those who have helped this book progress through reading and reinforcing. This includes, as always, my family; my parents, Susan and Warren Pearl, and my brother, Ian Pearl; as well as Benjamin Cavell, Joseph Gangemi, Julia Green, A

Additional thanks: the archivists and librarians at Boston Public Library, Harvard University, Iowa University, Duke University, Maryland Historical Society, Enoch Pratt Public Library of Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, New York Public Library, the Library of Virginia and the University of Virginia. Also, for generous input related to Poe and specific areas of nineteenth-century life and culture: Ralph Clayton, Dr. John Emsley, Allan Holtzman, Jeffrey Meyers, Scott Peeples, Edward Papenfuse, Jeff Savoye, Ke

Further appreciation to the generations of scholars who have assembled our current knowledge about Poe's life, including the exceptional Burton Pollin (who first noticed the appearance, mentioned in this novel, of the initials "E. S. T. G." in the Broadway Journal). A note of praise for the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore website (eapoe.org), created by Jeff Savoye, which should set the standard for all online literary resources. Finally, thanks to the staffs and supporters of the Poe homes and museums in Baltimore, Fordham, Philadelphia, and Richmond, as well as the Westminster burial yard in Baltimore, for sustaining the story of Poe as a living experience and allowing all of us a chance to visit.

About The Author

MATTHEW PEARL is the author of The Dante Club, a New York Times and international bestseller, and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante's Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. The Dante Club has been published in more than thirty languages and forty countries around the world. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He can be reached via his website, www.matthewpearl.com.