Wednesday, October 7, 2026 · 6:00 PM
Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters — 105 Brattle St., Cambridge, MA
Join us for this special book launch event with author Paul Lewis, on the 177th anniversary of the day Poe died in 1849. Copies of Quothing “The Raven”: The First Responses to America’s Most Famous Poem will be available for purchase and signing. What factors influenced the attention devoted to Poe’s “Raven” from the very day when it was first published in 1845? Why was it widely reprinted, praised, criticized, and mocked during the following weeks and months? How has it sustained interest from that first publication through to the present? And how did Poe’s “Little Longfellow War” and Bostonian parodies of “The Raven” figure in the rollicking rollout of America’s most famous poem? Paul Lewis is a professor emeritus at Boston College, past president of the Poe Studies Association, the curator of exhibitions on literary Boston, and the neologist who coined the word “Frankenfood.” The author of books and articles on humor, American literature, gothic fiction, and literary Boston, Lewis edited The Citizen Poets of Boston: A Collection of Forgotten Poems, 1789-1820 , for the University Press of New England. His newest book, Quothing “The Raven”: The First Responses to America’s Most…