Poe’s influence on varied and broad swaths of popular culture—hard-boiled detective fiction, horror and suspense films, song lyrics, crime-scene-analysis dramas, graphic novels—seems to prove Allen Ginsberg’s claim that “everything leads to Poe.” Immortalized in the minds of readers and fans—as well as in television, film, t-shirts, and collectibles—Poe continues to… read more
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New exhibitions open today
Two new exhibitions, From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe and Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works, open today at the Ransom Center. In conjunction with the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, the exhibition Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works, drawn exclusively from the Center’s collections,… read more
Poe Mania: View more than 4,000 Poe-related images, but "I guarantee that you will never fully grasp Poe the man or writer"
The Ransom Center has launched the Poe digital collection, where online visitors have the opportunity to see collection and exhibition items, ranging from manuscripts in Poe’s meticulous hand to his annotated copies of the “Tales and Poems” and “Eureka.” The Ransom Center’s Associate Director and Hobby Foundation Librarian Richard Oram,… read more
Poe Mania: Can you out-decode Poe?
In 1839, while working as an editor for Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, Edgar Allan Poe encouraged his readers to send in cryptographs, or short encrypted texts, that he would then attempt to solve. He explained that the “ciphers” should be simple substitution ciphers, that is, readers should substitute a particular symbol… read more
Apply for a fellowship at the Ransom Center and "watch works develop in their different stages"
The Ransom Center announces its application process for the more than 50 fellowships that are awarded annually to support scholarly research projects in all areas of the humanities. Applicants must apply by February 1, 2010, and demonstrate the need for substantial on-site use of the Center’s collections. Recent fellow Daniel… read more
Insider’s Perspective: The Ransom Center in literature
In celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, the Ransom Center has published Collecting the Imagination: The First Fifty Years of the Ransom Center, a richly illustrated chronicle of its history. The following is an excerpt from Collecting the Imagination.