“The Fall of the House of Usher” Blog Post

by Meggie T.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short narrative, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” was first published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in September 1839. It was later revised and republished in the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. However, the poem “The Haunted Palace” within the short story was separately published earlier in an issue of Baltimore Museum magazine. Voloshin suggested that the poem was incorporated into the narrative to give the poem more context as well as “a representation of the fall of thought” in the story as well as the turning point (Voloshin 22).

Thomas Dunn English, Poe’s physician and alienated friend, claimed that he tried to sell his poem “The Haunted Palace” to John L. O’Sullivan, editor of The Democratic Review (Winwar 355). However, English believed O’Sullivan rejected the offer because he had trouble comprehending the poem. Instead, Poe’s poem was published in the April 1839 issue of Baltimore Museum. Voloshin’s suggestion is consistent with Poe’s later incorporation of his poem into “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 

After the poem was published, Poe’s rival, Rufus Wilmot Griswold raised suspicion that the poem was plagiarized from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Beleaguered City.” Longfellow’s “’Beleaguered City’ is designed to imply a mind beset with lunatic fancies; and this is, identically, the intention of ‘The Haunted Palace’” (Longfellow). Even the title of Longfellow’s poem is a paraphrased version of Poe’s. In 1841, Poe wrote a letter to Griswold addressing the plagiarism suspicion and claimed that it was actually Longfellow who plagiarized him. Poe stated in his letter that although both poem shared many similarities, the “allegorical conduct, the style of its versification & expression” were all his own. He also notese c that Longfellow’s poem was published six weeks after his appeared in Baltimore’s Museum (Poe).

Even with Griswold’s suspicion, “The Haunted Palace” was one of the poems featured in the first American poetry anthology, The Poets and Poetry of America published in 1842. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and poem, “The Haunted Mansion,” has become the classic works of American Gothic literature.

 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Letter to Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Autographed
          letter. 28 September 1850.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Letter to Rufus Wilmot Griswold. 29 May 1841.
          <www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p4105290>

Voloshin, Beverly. “Explanation in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’” in Studies in
          Short Fiction, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall, 1986, pp. 419-28. 

Winwar, Frances. “The Haunted Palace. A Life of Edgar Allan Poe.” The Pennsylvania
          Magazine of History and Biography. (1959): 355-337. Web.
          <www.jstor.org/stable/20089220?seq=2>

Wohlpart, Jim. “Edgar Allan Poe ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Florida Gulf Coast
          University.
          <itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/PoeFall.htm>