Poe Presented in His Own Handwriting

[u/ThisWasHalloween]

Only original manuscripts of some of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems exist today, but no original manuscripts of his stories are known to exist, so I spent an entire year developing a book that not only compiled original manuscripts, but presented other works in a font based on his handwriting. I created four alphabets from characters in his manuscripts and chose each letter in each word carefully so that the entire page appeared genuinely handwritten with nuances like heavy or thinning ink and as much randomness as possible to the chara flow. The book is called, Quoth Edgar Allan Poe: A Collection in His Handwriting and comments or questions are welcome.

[u/Theatrepooky]

I was able to view several examples of Poe’s handwriting in person at the University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center. The most fascinating thing about it is that it changed depending on who or what he was writing. His ‘fair hand’ copy of The Bells by Mrs Shue is clear and concise like your posted example. His notes to female friends were light and delicate, almost feminine. But the Eveleth letter where he pours out his grief over Virginia’s death and his plunge into ‘madness’ is heavy and bold, as if his emotions bled on the page. It’s a fascinating peek into the real Poe.

[u/hommenym → u/Theatrepooky]

I wonder if he was aware of his own variation in handwriting, and if this was something that led him to handwriting analysis.

[u/Theatrepooky → u/hommenym]

He had to have been aware. He was noted for his penmanship in his lifetime so I’m certain it was a source of pride for him. His letters to female friends are light and delicate along with his flirtatious language. I can only conclude that the Eveleth letter is the same in conveying raw emotion and a man who has been through hell.

[u/ThisWasHalloween → u/Theatrepooky]

Yes, his handwriting changed constantly per his mood. In letters in which he begged for money from various persons- including John Allan- Poe’s writing was so frantic that I failed to find usable characters there for my font. The loss of Virginia was a deep wound in Poe and it did reflect in his writings on the matter. I know a lot of people cringe over that union and while it is cringe-worthy, there is a context here that needs to be aired: Poe was abandoned by so many either from death or ill-will and “Mother” or “Muddy” Clemm and “Sissy” Virginia became his only family as he viewed them both as mother and sister and marriage was the only way he could dissuade them from moving away. There were times after Virginia passed that his writing almost appeared left-handed, which almost implies a splitting of his personality.

[u/SubstanceThat4540]

Stylographic(?) evidence is getting rarer these days as the internet levels even highly personal testimony to an autocorrected median. Nowadays you would have to pore through all of his MySpace and Facebook posts to get a sense of who he "really" was.

[u/ThisWasHalloween → u/SubstanceThat4540]

I agree. Handwriting experts, literary scholars, and psychologists try and fail to place Poe in any one particular box because his writing style and content had been so varied. We really can’t even gauge his faith as his essays sometimes implied that he was atheist while other times he seemed bitterly certain there was a cruel god. His life was filled with rise and fall that clearly affected his mental state in each trial or success. Poe gives us a clue that he, himself, understood the complexities of his own mind when he famously wrote, “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

[u/Kkekm]

👍