Edgar Allan Poe
A persistent, though mostly apocryphal story involving Fort Independence was allegedly the inspiration behind one of Edgar Allan Poe's well known works. A monument outside the west battery of the fort marks the grave of Lieutenant Robert F. Massie who was killed in a duel there on December 25, 1817. According to folklorist Edward Rowe Snow, Massie was so popular with the soldiers stationed at Fort Independence that they took out their frustration on his killer, Lieutenant Gustavus Drane, by walling him up within a vault in the fort. Edgar Allan Poe, while serving with the 1st United States Artillery Regiment at Fort Independence purportedly heard the tale and was inspired, according to Snow, to write The Cask of Amontillado.
The legend that purportedly inspired Poe is not entirely accurate. The duel did in fact take place, but the victor, Lieutenant Drane, was not murdered by the fort's soldiers but continued in his military career and was later promoted to the rank of captain. After the Second World War Lietenant Massie's remains were moved to the cemetery at Fort Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts.
Read more about this topic: Fort Independence (Massachusetts)
Famous quotes by edgar allan poe:
“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“‘There is no exquisite beauty,’ says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, ‘without some strangeness in the proportion.’”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely- discernible fissure,... extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The want of an international Copy-Right Law, by rendering it nearly impossible to obtain anything from the booksellers in the way of remuneration for literary labor, has had the effect of forcing many of our very best writers into the service of the Magazines and Reviews.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)