Science & Science Fiction

Edgar Allan Poe, The Conchologist's First Book. Philadelphia: Haswell, Barrington, and Haswell, 1839.

"Preface" with Poe's annotations to The Conchologist's First Book.

Peter S. Duval, illustrations for The Conchologist's First Book (another copy).

Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka: A Prose Poem. New York: George P. Putnam, 1848. With Poe's annotations.

Edgar Allan Poe, "Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." The Broadway Journal, December 20, 1845.

Edgar Allan Poe, "Mesmeric Revelation." The Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, August 1844.

Edgar Allan Poe, Mesmerism "In Articulo Mortis." London: Short & Co., 1846.

Edgar Allan Poe, "Arthur Gordon Pym, No. I." Southern Literary Messenger, January 1837.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838.

Poe was alert to the remarkable scientific and technological breakthroughs of his time. His interest in these discoveries was due in part to his commercial instincts: writing that drew on the widespread fascination with science would find eager readers.

Poe revised The Conchologist's First Book, a textbook about mollusks, into an inexpensive edition for students. The changes he made show his thorough understanding of zoology. One of the last books he published in his lifetime, Eureka, attempted to explain the workings of the universe. The volume shown here was Poe’s own copy. Its pages are full of notes in his own hand.

Poe had a gift for converting abstract questions about physics and psychology into entertaining stories, essentially creating what we now call science fiction. Tales such as “Mesmeric Revelation” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” which plugged into a nineteenth-century vogue for hypnotism, were serious meditations on the thrilling possibilities of “magnetized” consciousness. His only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which revolves around an Antarctic expedition, mixed real data from actual voyages with fantastic fabrications.