The Ironic History of Poe's "Life in Death": A Literary Skeleton in the Closet

Abstract

?N E APRIL, I842, issue of Graham's Magazine, the penultimate under Poe's editorship, his tale Life in Death first appeared. Later revised and retitled Oval Portrait, it has become one of his better-known tales; the original version, however, chaotic. At the outset, the narrative wanders aimlessly from paragraph to paragraph, introducing one irrelevancy and false emphasis after another, and does not arrive at the central plot until almost half its length has been reached. By any standards, Life in Death a weak tale. By Poe's own exacting standards of unity, brevity, and originality, it a failure-as fiction, that is. As an example of Poe's self-destructive penchant for undermining his own efforts and hopes of success, Life in Death and the ironic circumstances attending its publication tell an interesting story. When Life in Death appeared in Graham's, Poe had been editor for a year, a role he considered thralldom. Being a mere Magazinist seeking only commercial success was to him frustrating and artistically enervating.' In i837, he had left a similar position on the Southern Literary Messenger because his best energies were wasted in the service of an illiterate and vulgar, although wellmeaning man [Thomas W. White].2 His association with the publisher George R. Graham proved to be much the same. Soon, Poe was writing his friends that he was feeling & more disgusted with the magazine.3 To coin one's brain into silver, at the nod of a master, he wrote Frederick W. Thomas on July 4, I84I, is to my thinking, the hardest task in the world.4 The only solution to