Quothing "The Raven"

It did not take long to see that Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" would have an enduring impact on American culture. Instantly ubiquitous, it was widely reprinted, celebrated, criticized, and mocked during the years between its January 29, 1845, publication in New York and Poe's death in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. In QUOTHING "THE RAVEN," Paul Lewis follows America's most famous poem during these years from the literary salons where it was discussed, to the newspapers where it was reviewed, to the twenty-nine parodies that made fun of both the poem and its controversial author. Collected here for the first time, these parodies replaced Poe's "ominous bird of yore" with a veritable menagerie of other animals including a dove, owl, gazelle, turkey, skunk, rats, and bedbugs! They carry us back to barrooms and boarding houses; a dormitory in New Haven and a boxing ring in Maryland; the New York town council and the Congress of the United States; and, most ignominiously, Hell.