Edward G Pettit

Here's the first in a series of posts about the best and most interesting Edgar Allan Poe sites on the internet.

Next year, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and the Baltimore Poe House will be co-recipients of the Mystery Writers of America's Raven Award, for "outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing."  I could make some crack about how their connection to Poe is really an exercise in creative writing (meaning, fiction) anyway, but that would be ungracious.

Actually, the Poe Society has always done wonderful work in the Poe field and I've enjoyed reading the scholarly monographs they publish.  Most special has been their website, which is the best the web has to offer for Poe's works.  You can find all the stories and poems in all their various published forms, as well as the bibliographical history of each work.  Many of the reviews, essays and letters are here, as well as some critical work by scholars.  I visit this Poe site more than any other and am constantly discovering new things.  Use the search engine and you'll find yourself lost for hours reading about Poe, one item leading to another.  It's like having a vast Poe library of source material at your fingertips.  I'd give the Poe Society a Raven Award just for this site alone.  This site is so good, it should be connected to Philadelphia somehow.