Obituary

Abstract

John E. Reilly (1928–2015), one of the founding members of the Poe Studies Association, Honorary PSA Member, and emeritus professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, died on October 28, 2014, and is buried in Notre Dame Cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts. A member of the American Antiquarian Society and on the editorial boards of Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism and the Edgar Allan Poe Review, Dr. Reilly was also a lector, a Eucharistic minister, a member of the Liturgy Committee, the choir, and the Parish Council in St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Worcester.Those who knew John remember him as an affable, kind, and generous man whose interest in Poe continued his whole life. We welcomed his participation at the bicentennial Poe conference in Philadelphia in 2009 where he chaired two panels: one on “Hidden Contexts” and the other on “Humor,” both interests of Dr. Reilly's. “The Lesser Death-Watch and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’” published in one of the first issues of American Transcendental Quarterly deals quite literally with a hidden context and now appears at the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore's website, http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1921/jer19691.htm. We can also find Reilly's “Poe in American Drama: Versions of the Man,” http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19861d.htm, and “The Image of Poe in American Poetry,” http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psblctrs/pl19751.htm, there as well. For an intimate look at Dr. Reilly's academic career in his own words and a complete list of his works on Poe, see my 2000 “Interview with John Reilly” in the Edgar Allan Poe Review.