Arts Daily / Edgar Allan Poe Talk Led by Tim Helwig

Edgar Allan Poe Talk Led by Tim Helwig

Caricature of poet Edgar Allan Poe writing at a desk with sunken eyes, dark hair, and dark mustache.

Free admission. This event is a discussion, not an in-character performance. Hughes Main Library and online. 7 p.m.

Raised in the theatre and orphaned as a child, Poe was fostered by a wealthy Richmond, Virginia merchant who had admired the acting of the boy’s mother. Poe attended the University of Virginia and then West Point where he rebelled against the academy’s restrictions. He excelled in the literary arts, becoming a master of the macabre as well as the poet of the people. He became an unsurpassed teller of tales who created the detective genre, inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. As a literary critic his essays on art angered the established artistic world and inspired new generations of writers.