As a follow-up to Denise’s book birthday announcement yesterday, I thought I’d share two articles I have written in the past on the subject of Edgar Allan Poe and his editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, the so-called Mother of Thanksgiving. It’s an interesting story because in the 19th century Hale was the editor of the largest magazine in the nation. And it was a women’s magazine, exclusively.

Poe is not known for writing for women, specifically, or even men, but scaring the shinola out of all genders equally. This period of time in our nation’s history, however, was a golden age for magazines. The populace was starting to be just educated enough that a daily newspaper and a weekly or monthly magazine was an investment that households were willing to make.

Women’s magazines were especially useful, because they came with sheet music, patterns for women’s clothing, and even architectural plans. Everything a family—not just a woman—would find useful in the home.

Into this sweet, sedate environment entered America’s first Stephen King.

Back in 2020, I interviewed Denise on about the first book she did on the history of the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a post for SleuthSayers entitled,

We Gather Together with Denise Kiernan

That’s a pretty funny interview, because the two of us cannot stop joking when we interview each other. The second article is written entirely by me, and it came a few years later, because I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. I thought it was absolutely fascinating that the father of the American detective story once worked as a gossip columnist for a women’s magazine. And that he did such a great job on the gossip that the publisher had to initiate what is probably the first disclaimer in an American magazine, essentially saying, “Mr. Poe’s obstreperous opinions are his own…”

You can find out more about that in a post entitled:

The Curious Case of Mr. Poe & Mrs. Hale

Here’s a snippet:

It’s hard to tell what Hale actually thought of Poe. One of Hale’s biographers suggests that she grew fond of Poe’s small, impoverished household, when they were living in the same city, Philadelphia, and may have helped the family with groceries and other necessities. While the magazine lavished praise on his later work, continuing to celebrate his “genius,” she’s on the record as having paid him pitifully for his work—50¢ a page for a story that appeared in her Christmas annual. (In this case, he would have pocketed $5 for a 10-page story.) That is not terribly bad, if that was all her budget allowed, but at the same time, Nathaniel Hawthorne demanded (and got) $25 a story from Godey’s. Hawthorne famously argued that if he held out for better pay, he’d be able to support his family writing only 12 stories a year. Can’t really blame him.

I hope you’ll take the time to check out either or both of these articles. They were fun to write, and helped me understand Poe—a writer I’ve admired since childhood—to a better degree.

If you’re interested in any of Denise’s Thanksgiving books, you can find them this page on my site.

Photos by me.