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Emily Ogden at Harvard Book Store
Past event
Featured Book
Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe
A fascinating and intimate inquiry into the shadowy life and horrifyingly compelling work of Edgar Allan Poe and why we are drawn to darkness in art
Since Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious death in 1849, his stories and poems have captivated millions of readers around the world. Two centuries later, why do we continue to descend into the darkness of his imagination—and of the genres, from horror to crime, that he pioneered?
In this spellbinding and singular book, Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting grant recipient Emily Ogden plumbs the darkness within Poe and enters it alongside him. She interweaves stories from his mysterious and tragic life—from his strange disappearances and tortured romances to his nearly fatal use of opium—with those of his most famous readers and translators, including poet Charles Baudelaire, writer Julio Cortázar, and psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoleon and a patient of Sigmund Freud.
Tracing their passionate attachments to Poe—and Ogden’s own, unexpectedly sparked when she taught an introductory Poe course at the University of Virginia, where Poe himself was once a student—Darkness Becomes Bright makes a different case for literature from the one we most often hear. This exquisite volume shows how Poe’s vision and its echoes across the generations allow us to make peace with our own flawed humanity.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
Harvard Book Store welcomes Emily Ogden—professor of English at the University of Virginia and acclaimed author of On Not Knowing and Credulity—for a discussion of her new book, Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe. She will be joined in conversation by Beth Blum—Professor of English at Harvard University.
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Unable to attend a Harvard Book Store author event? You can still pre-order a signed book by one of our visiting authors.While we can't guarantee fulfillment of a signed book pre-order, our authors are almost always able to sign extra books to fulfill such orders.
Contact Info
General Info
(617) 661-1515
info@harvard.com
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Featured Authors
Emily Ogden
Emily Ogden is the author of On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays and Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and a Mellon Fellowship in the Columbia Society of Fellows, she is a professor of English at the University of Virginia.
Beth Blum
Beth Blum is a Professor of English at Harvard University. She is a scholar of literature and of therapeutic culture. Her first book, The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature, was published in 2020. Her current book examines how the longstanding directive to “be present” or “be here now” is inherited by modern authors.
About the Venue
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