WASHINGTON — Best known for his haunting short stories and ringing poems, the familiar yet enigmatic writer Edgar Allan Poe is being honored today on a new commemorative postage stamp.
Ceremonies marking issuance of the 42-cent stamp were set at the Library of Virginia in Richmond, Va., the city where the poet was raised after the death of his parents. He was born 200 years ago.
“It is ironic that a man who faced loneliness, poverty and despair throughout much of his life should be so richly loved by so many so long after his death,” Katherine C. Tobin, a member of the post office’s board of governors, said in prepared remarks. “He invented the detective story and elevated literary criticism to an art form. Poetry, however, was his self-declared passion.”
In addition to his fame as a writer, Poe also may have pioneered the idea of the Big Bang theory for the birth of the universe.
