This is another well-researched historical fiction novel, this time revolving around Edgar Allan Poe, his wife (the titled Mrs. Poe) and his purported affair with a married woman, Frances Osgood. Frances' husband left her to fend for herself and her two daughters while she struggled with a career writing poetry and living with her wealthy friends. Poe's wife, his first cousin, is 13 years his junior, and he lives with her and her mother, his aunt, in shabby quarters while his fame grows following the attraction between her husband and Frances. Her malevolence is barely contained when she meets Frances.

I found this most interesting for a glimpse into the self-declared literati of the New York social scene. The names and histories of those mentioned are fascinating, as is the description of Edgar Poe, his marriage and his early tumultuous life. Historical fiction provides an impetus to further explore the real histories of the characters on the page. ( )

I’m disappointed in this book. It’s an interesting premise- a story about a romantic affair with Edgar Allen Poe, but I had to put it down early and firmly.
The author seems to think that dropping names of famous people of the time every sentence is placing the story in time, giving us the atmosphere. Unfortunately this reads a bit like Forrest Gump on speed. The main character, despite being abandoned by her husband and living only on the small amounts she makes writing, somehow knows every famous person in New York and runs into them anytime she walks about. It is impossible to believe. She’s raising three children as well but spends little time on them, handing them to a nanny while she gads about to salons and is critical of Poe’s wife’s dresses and living conditions.

I put it down after our heroine, in a rare moment of family togetherness, goes for a walk and meets the mayor and several poets and famous writers, all of them shouting things like “I’ll get to reading your story of the scarlet letter soon” (editor yelling to Hawthorne across the street).

Everyone asks Poe to read “The Raven”, which, I am sure, would have driven him to murder, but he promotes our heroine’s poems about flowers to everyone he meets, and spends the rest of his time lurking in corners and looking at her with intense gazes. It’s all too much.

Much like spending time with a gossipy name-dropping drama queen. Just couldn’t spend another moment. ( )

I have been a huge lover of the works of Edgar Allen Poe for as long as I can remember, so when I saw the title to this novel, and read the synopsis I was expecting something new and fresh to be revealed in the life of Poe. I was to be sorely disappointed.

Most the characters that appear in this novel are well-known names from the world of American literature in the first half of the 19th century so little, if any background development was required for them; nor did it seem at some points in the novel was there a need to explain their presence in certain scenes. There were so many of these ‘names’ in the book that it also began to read like a ‘who’s who’ of the literati world; there is name-dropping and then there is this novel, which goes well over the line of what is appropriate in this area.

Apart from the issue I have just mentioned, there were also a few more parts of the ‘character’ placement and writing in this book that I didn’t like. There were several who appeared in the book that had an active role in Poe’s life, whose actions and personalities were so distorted by this Author that, without historical evidence, it would have been hard to believe they had lived at all; as a complete opposite to this there were other characters that the Author chose to write as closely as possible to their historic representations. Why they chose to do this for one set of characters and not for another, I couldn’t understand.

In all my readings about Poe, his life and his works I have never come across any that painted him as a sex magnet. This Author does so in this book, not only in the way she writes about him but also through the impression that the words leave on the readers mind long after the book has been put down. If, as a reader, you know nothing at all about Poe and his life, this would leave you with a much skewed opinion of what the man was like. Like all others of his ilk mentioned in the book he was a complex and creative character, none of which manages to make its way into the pages of this read.

Unfortunately, I am unable to recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction, as I feel you may be misled by the contents.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2014/01/08/review-mrs-poe-lynn-cullen/




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This is a well-written, fun historical novel that casts a completely different light on the life and personality of Edgar Allan Poe. My entire scope of knowledge going in was that Poe did, in fact, have an on-going friendship with Frances Osgood and that there were rumors of something much more. Lynn Cullen takes that information and develops it into the love affair that might have been.

Along the way, she introduces us to other well-known celebrities of the time and has them rub elbows in New York, in much the way that they must actually have done. Of course, in the end, we are left with the enigmatic, mysterious Poe whose life and death defy historians' definitions. No one can ever really get us beyond that. His works alone make his mind seem more a labyrinth than an open book.

The book is fiction, the relationship is conjecture, the writing is skillful and the history is factually correct ...and that is all I need to make a fun historical fiction read. On a personal note, this was a gift from my granddaughter, who proved that she knows a little about what Grandma will enjoy. Thanks, Nicole. ( )

I chose to read Mrs Poe this week because it is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday Jan 19th. I've always thought of Poe in a kind of tragically romantic kind of way, as apparently many of the female gender have, but never realized that he was a real-life heartbreaker.
The story deals with a love affair between Poe and Frances Osgood. What we know for certain is that they wrote poems to each other. But some say they had a child together. Much is debated. And it is in this playground of uncertainty, of what may have been, that this tale takes place.
In real life, I find adultery detestable but it seems my morals flag a bit in fiction. I noticed this about myself in The Pink Carnation series, though I forget which book it was exactly. Same here. I enjoyed Fanny and Edgar together even though both were married to other people. I know it's just that I was enticed to feel that way by the writing, Poe with his consumptive, child-like cousin-bride and Frances with her philandering husband, but still. The writing is very good. I had trouble tearing myself away from it. Also, in places it gave me a Jane Eyre vibe.
I would likely read more by Cullen ( )