THE POE COTTAGE FROM KINGS BRIDGE ROAD 



In its original location 



Photographed [884 by Stoughton 



POE'S LIFE IN FORDHAM. 

 BY HENRY NOBLE MACCRACKEN, Ph.D., 



OF YALE UNIVERSITY. 



HE three years from June. 1846. to June, 1841). 

 which Edgar Allan Poe passed at Fordham in our 

 Borough of the Bronx were made up of half a 

 year of foreboding and illness, of an " immemorial 

 year" of seclusion and inactivity, and of a year and a half 

 of fitful yet fruitful renewal of literary effort. One event 

 determines this division of his life; one shadow darkens his 

 days to the end; the loss of his wife. The half-year of fore- 

 boding and illness tells the story of Poe's loss of self-mastery 

 brought on by dread of the coming of death to his Virginia; 

 the immemorial year tells us of the prostration of his faculties 



