On January 23, 2023, the Edgar Allan Poe in Richmond concluded its first century and launched its second with a Centennial Capstone event. Those fortunate enough to attend saw previews of the museum’s new exhibits and toured a virtual reality gallery before hearing authors R. L. Stine (born 1943) and Nnedi Okorafor (born 1974) discuss Poe’s influence on their writing. Stine described his first exposure to Poe when, as a child, he read comic book adaptations of Poe’s tales. He has loved horror ever since.Given the large and enthusiastic crowds that attended the museum’s centennial celebrations, one might scarcely believe how daunting a task the founders faced in opening Virginia’s first museum devoted to a writer. It began in 1906 with an unsuccessful movement to erect a statue of Poe in Richmond. The idea of including a monument to a mere poet among the city’s rapidly expanding roster of towering equestrian bronzes of military and political leaders seemed ridiculous. Writing, after all, was a leisure activity unworthy of the honors bestowed on the great deeds of generals and statesmen.The defeat of the statue was followed in 1916 by a failed attempt to save the office in which Poe edited the Southern Literary Messenger and to convert that building into an International Poe Library. While converting the homes of political leaders like Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) and George Washington (1732–1799) or military leaders like Confederate general Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) into museums was already common in Virginia, the idea of preserving a home or building merely because of its association with an author was unprecedented. Newspaper accounts of the time reveal that the city was far more committed to honoring its Confederate past than its meager place in literary history.This disinterest in literature can be traced to before Poe’s time, when the local newspapers, the Enquirer and the Richmond Whig, were devoted to partisan politics, with the former serving as an organ of the Democrats while the latter promoted Whig views. The Southern Literary Messenger, which employed Poe from 1835 until 1837, was the first important magazine in the state devoted to promoting literature instead of politics.How successful it was in changing local attitudes is indicated by the following anecdote. Five years after Poe left the Messenger, British author Charles Dickens (1812–1870), who was already a household name on both sides of the Atlantic, visited Richmond to a less than enthusiastic reception. At a dinner hosted by the city’s newspaper editors, Thomas Ritchie (1778–1854) of the Enquirer confessed to Dickens that none of them had read his works but were certain their wives had. By contrast, northern audiences crowded the docks to greet the ships carrying the latest installments of Dickens’s serialized novels.Although local authors Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945) and James Branch Cabell (1879–1958), whose 1919 novel Jurgen was the subject of a much-publicized obscenity trial, had attained a national readership for their work, Richmond’s interest in literature had changed little by the opening of the twentieth century. When F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) and his wife, Zelda (1900–1948), visited in 1920, they found it a backwards town whose only attraction was a museum of dusty old Confederate uniforms.Poe’s own growing national and international acclaim had done little to change the opinion of him in the author’s hometown. The writer of an unsigned editorial in the January 19, 1929, issue of the Richmond News Leader opines that the reason Richmonders love Robert E. Lee and dislike Poe is that Lee was a noble and dignified person, representing the best of what it meant to be a Virginian, whereas Poe’s weakness of character had caused him to succumb to sin and vice. The editorialist adds that the only reason northerners liked Poe so much was that they had been spared the trial of having lived with him. Since Poe had spent more of his life in Virginia than in the North, the writer believes that the northerners simply did not understand what a horrible person Poe was. “The closer men came to Lee the more he awed them,” states the editorialist. “The people who lived farthest from Poe had the highest opinion of him.”Given the dislike of Poe prevalent in Richmond in the first decades of the twentieth century, it seems extraordinary that enough of the city’s residents would eventually unite to establish a museum in the poet’s honor. In fact, a diverse and liberal body emerged to champion him. Among the leaders were Poe collector James Howard Whitty (1859–1937), American Reform rabbi Edward N. Calisch (1865–1946), and preservationist Annie Boyd Jones (d. 1939).The museum’s support was international from the start. Charter members hailed from twenty-five different states in addition to France and Canada. They included Poe scholars Thomas Ollive Mabbott (1898–1968) and Killis Campbell along with journalists Charles Marshall Graves and Samuel Travers Clover (1859–1834). The actor John Drew (1853–1927) and millionaire James Hazen Hyde (1876–1959) were among the celebrities who lent their support. Poe collectors Henry Huntington (1850–1927) and Oliver R. Barrett (1873–1950) were in the group as well. The Poe family and the descendants of Poe’s friends and enemies were also represented on the charter membership roll.The opening ceremonies took place on April 26, 1922 with speeches and readings by Poe biographer George Edward Woodberry (1855–1930), author Armistead C. Gordon (1855–1931), sculptor and historian Edward Virginius Valentine (1838–1930), Virginia governor R. Lee Trinkle (1876–1939), historian William G. Stanard (1859–1933), Thomas Ollive Mabbott, state highway commissioner George P. Coleman (1870–1948), state librarian Henry McIlwaine (1864–1934), the University of Virginia’s Edgar Allan Poe Professor of English James Southall Wilson (1880–1963), and others. Since no literary museum opening would be complete without the participation of prominent writers, local novelists Glasgow, Cabell, Kate Langley Bosher (1865–1932), and Margaret Prescott Montague (1878–1955) attended as the guests of honor.The museum then consisted of a small eighteenth-century stone house opening onto a garden constructed with bricks salvaged from the Southern Literary Messenger building and from other sites associated with the author. The museum collection could only boast fifty-nine objects, which included Poe’s boot hooks and a lock of his hair. These items were augmented by loans of original Poe manuscripts and artifacts from the Poe collector James H. Whitty, Henry Huntington, the grandchildren of Poe’s literary executor Rufus Griswold (1815–1857), and the former caretakers of Poe’s fiancée Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878).As a measure of the significance the founders placed on this new shrine to the written word, they invited presidents Warren G. Harding (1865–1923), William Howard Taft (1857–1930), and Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) to attend both the opening ceremony and the first anniversary celebration. Although local newspapers reported that Wilson would attend, all three declined the invitation, opting to send letters of congratulation instead.By the close of its first decade, the museum had expanded into two adjoining buildings and constructed a third from materials salvaged from what was thought to be one of Poe’s childhood homes. The collection had also grown with the donation of a substantial set of Poe first editions and first printings from California psychologist John Wooster Robertson (1856–1940).News of the Poe Shrine spread through newspapers in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Durham, Camden, Columbus, Providence, Lincoln, Rochester, and Marshall (Tex.). Notable visitors during the 1920s included comedian Will Rogers (1879–1935), boxer Jack Dempsey (1895–1983), sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867–1941), and writer Willa Cather (1873–1947).Author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) described his visit in a May 4, 1929, letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (active 1910s–30s):The first major obstacle the museum encountered was the Great Depression. Fortunately, the museum’s board chair, the newspaper editor and Civil War historian Douglas Southall Freeman (1886–1953), was too busy to devote much time to the day-to-day operations of the museum, so he allowed one of his paper’s columnists, Mary Gavin Traylor (1890–1946), to spend half of each day at the newspaper office and the other half at the museum. The daughter of Poe collector Robert Lee Traylor (1864–1907), Mary Gavin Traylor was a distinguished journalist who had worked as a French correspondent for the Herald-Tribune before returning to Richmond to write the society column for the Richmond News Leader. Having inherited a passion for Poe from late her father, she devoted herself to championing the museum and building its collection during the darkest days of the 1930s. When the institution’s income proved insufficient to heat the buildings, she chopped wood for the fireplace and solicited donations from her many friends. Given the specialization of today’s museum professionals, it may be difficult to believe that one dynamic person simultaneously served as the museum’s curator, librarian, tour guide, host, and board secretary; however, Traylor performed all these tasks while expanding the collection. When the board of trustees told her it was impossible, she secured twenty donations to purchase the museum’s Cornwell copy of the “Ultima Thule” daguerreotype of Poe. Similarly, she was able to raise enough funds to acquire James Carling’s original illustrations of “The Raven” as well as a pair of silver-plated candelabra that belonged Marie Louise Shew, Poe’s nurse to whom he dedicated the poems “To Marie Louise’ and “To M. L. S——.”The Poe Museum continued to be sought out by Poe admirers. In 1935, it entertained authors Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten. The latter photographed the visit and sent the prints, inscribed by Stein, to the museum.Just as the nation recovered from the Great Depression, the new museum faced another upheaval, World War II. The war in Europe forced Spanish Surrealist painter and writer Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) to the United States, where he, his wife, and the novelist Henry Miller (1891–1980) lived together outside Richmond with the publisher Caresse Crosby (1892–1970). Dalí and Miller visited the museum in 1940, and Dalí later claimed, in the closing paragraph of his autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, that Poe’s ghost drove a black Cadillac up from Richmond to Crosby’s house to help him write the book.When the United States entered the war at the end of 1941, the museum sent several of its most important artifacts off-site for protection. In the absence of its biggest attractions, the museum filled some of its depleted galleries with loaned artwork, including an entire exhibit of popsicle sticks with celebrities’ faces painted on them. At least one of these was painted to resemble Poe.With the end of the war, the museum was able to retrieve its treasures and resume normal operations until two major changes took place. In 1946, the Poe Museum’s greatest champion, Mary Gavin Traylor, died. In the same year, Douglas S. Freeman resigned as president of the museum’s board after twenty-two years of service. One bright spot in this bleak year was the donation by Rufus Griswold’s grandchildren, Roger and Merrill Griswold, of the Edgar Allan Poe letters and manuscripts that had loaned to the museum for over two decades. Their gift formed the core of the museum’s collection of handwritten Poe documents.The 1950s saw major developments at the museum. First, it entered an agreement with the Library of Virginia, which offered to provide storage and display space for some of the museum’s most valuable manuscripts and first editions. At the same time, the museum remodeled two of its buildings. The stone house in which the museum began was decorated with colonial-era furnishings to interpret the building’s history independent of Poe. In the attic space above the tearoom, the board painted the walls blood red and covered them with James Carling’s illustrations for “The Raven.” This Raven Room became a highlight of the museum for next half century.In 1963, the museum relocated its eighteen-foot-long scale model of Poe’s Richmond from the Old Stone House to the adjoining building, which became a new exhibit space. Six years later, Ruth Nelson Page (1872–1976) donated a fragment of a Poe letter that had once belonged to her brother-in-law, the novelist Thomas Nelson Page (1853–1922). It would be fifty years before the museum received the donation of another Poe letter.In the 1970s, retired physics professor Dr. Bruce English (1921–2008) assumed the dual roles of president of the board of trustees and director of the museum. One of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, English had a special interest in Poe’s cosmological essay Eureka. While English expanded the museum’s programming and forged relationships with other institutions, his greatest contribution might have been hiring the museum’s first curator since Mary Gavin Traylor. Denise Bethel assumed the curatorial post in time to modernize the cataloging procedures and to care for some of the neglected artifacts.Among the visitors during that decade were actor Vincent Price (1911–1993), who had already starred in a series of Poe-inspired films, and poet and novelist James Dickey (1923–1997), who marked the occasion by sitting on Poe’s chair and writing a poem about Poe.Some of the most important paintings and pieces of furniture were restored during the 1980s. After Bethel’s departure, the care of the collections was taken over by retired librarian Katherine Smith.In 1995, the Poe Museum celebrated the sesquicentennial of the publication of “The Raven” with events and exhibits, including an art show judged by Poe scholar Burton Pollin (1916–2009). Two years later, the museum observed its own seventy-fifth anniversary with its largest and most important exhibit to date, Quoth the Raven: Selections from the Susan Jaffe Tane Collection of Edgar Allan Poe. Not since its opening had the museum attracted such a significant loan of artifacts. These included the earliest Poe manuscript in private hands and one of only twelve known surviving copies of Poe’s first book. Joining Tane’s artifacts was Poe’s waistcoat, donated by Antoinette Suiter (born 1923), the great-great granddaughter of Poe’s cousin Elizabeth Herring Smith (1815–1889). To mark the occasion, novelist Patricia Cornwell (born 1956) lectured at the museum.The last year of the decade coincided with the sesquicentennial of Poe’s death, so the museum united with the Poe Studies Association to host the first International Poe Conference in Richmond. The event featured a public performance by John Astin (born 1930) as Poe in the solo stage play Once upon a Midnight.The new century brought with it the museum’s next curator, who spent the first six months of his tenure restoring the model of Poe’s Richmond. He converted the collections catalog to a digital format and made it accessible online. He also introduced the museum’s first remote tours by utilizing the video conferencing site Skype, a laptop, and a rolling office chair.The museum’s events expanded to include a monthly Unhappy Hour and an annual Poe Birthday Bash, and it launched a series of changing exhibits to encourage repeat visitors. By the end of the decade, the museum had earned the praise of USA Today, Time, The New York Times, and other publications.This decade also saw the first Poe family member assume the presidency of the Poe Museum. A descendant of Edgar Poe’s uncle George Poe, Harry Lee Poe served as the Charles Colson Chair of Faith and Culture at Union University in Tennessee and still found the time to drive to Richmond to attend board meetings. Among his many significant contributions was the launch of the Edgar Allan Poe Young Writers Conference, a weeklong residential writing program for high school students.In 2009, the museum joined the world in celebrating the bicentennial of Poe’s birth, and the Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution honoring Poe for his contributions to world literature. The museum hosted and entire year of “Poecentennial” programs beginning with an ill-advised twenty-four-hour Poe Birthday Bash in January and concluding with a more manageable twelve-hour one the following year. The museum collaborated on events and exhibits with organizations around the Commonwealth, including the Library of Virginia, the Richmond Symphony, Richmond Shakespeare, Hanover Tavern, the Casemate Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.The second decade of the twenty-first century saw ever-expanding programming options at the museum and a number of important exhibits. The museum marked its ninetieth anniversary in 2012 with a 1920s-themed garden party and the opening of an exhibit of newly discovered or rarely seen Poe letters and manuscripts primarily borrowed from Susan Jaffe Tane but also including pieces from the collections of Michael Deas, Holt Edmunds, Frances Giles, and Mitch Kirsner. In the fall, the museum hosted a celebratory dinner at the Jefferson Hotel and placed a plaque on the previously unmarked grave of Poe’s last fiancée, Elmira Royster Shelton, at Shockoe Hill Cemetery.The next decade began with a long list of exciting plans that all came to a grinding halt with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the museum was forced to close for several months, it was able to continue serving the public through virtual programming, streaming videos, and a new online collections database. The museum continues to expand these offerings well after it reopened to the public.The museum’s centennial year in 2022 began with a surge of enthusiasm surrounding the unveiling of the extraordinary new gift of Poe memorabilia from Susan Jaffe Tane. As the most important gift the museum the museum had received in its history, the Tane artifacts drew significant press attention, increased visitation, and inspired other collectors to donate pieces of their own. These included letters from members of Poe’s circle, copies of magazines he edited, and a stained-glass light box inspired by “The Masque of the Red Death.”The centennial year began with another 1920s-themed garden party on the anniversary of the museum’s opening in April and concluded with a weekend of events in honor of Poe’s birthday in January. On Saturday, the museum’s Poe Birthday Bash entertained guests with music by the Embalmers and Cassidy Snider, a book talk by Sara Crocoll Smith, a screening of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Poe Movies, and a performance of “Edgar Allan” by the Coldharts. The following day, the museum opened its garden for a day of readings, performances, and workshops for children and families. On Sunday night, the museum’s board held a dinner at the site of the garden in which Poe courted his first fiancée. At the gathering, the board named its first emeritus members, thanking them for their decades of service on behalf of Poe and the museum.Monday evening’s capstone event, featuring Stine and Okorafor, drew too many visitors for the museum to contain and took place a few blocks away at the Dominion Energy Center. The outstanding attendance and the enthusiastic participants amply demonstrated that Richmond loves reading and has fully embraced its greatest author. Over the course of the past century, the Poe Museum has served over a million visitors from all fifty states and no fewer than forty different countries. It would never have been possible without the support of the many Poe devotees who steered Virginia’s first literary museum from its difficult beginning through the Great Depression and World War II into the twenty-first century. We trust that Poe’s fame is secure enough that future generations of his admirers will continue the museum’s work into the next century.