The author of The Reason for the Darkness of the Night speaks virtually on Tues., June 29th, at noon (EDT)!
The Ivy is thrilled to welcome John Tresch for a reading and discussion from his new book The Reason for the Darkness of the Night. John will be in conversation with the Director of the Comparative Literature Program at University of Maryland, Oliver Gaycken. This event will take place on Zoom.
Click here to order The Reason for the Darkness of the Night!
Decade after decade, Edgar Allan Poe remains one of the most popular American writers. He is beloved around the world for his pioneering detective fiction, tales of horror, and haunting, atmospheric verse. But what if there was another side to the man who wrote “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”?
In The Reason for the Darkness of the Night, John Tresch offers a bold new biography of a writer whose short, tortured life continues to fascinate. Shining a spotlight on an era when the lines separating entertainment, speculation, and scientific inquiry were blurred, Tresch reveals Poe’s obsession with science and lifelong ambition to advance and question human knowledge. Even as he composed dazzling works of fiction, he remained an avid and often combative commentator on new discoveries, publishing and hustling in literary scenes that also hosted the era’s most prominent scientists, semi-scientists, and pseudo-intellectual rogues. As one newspaper put it, “Mr. Poe is not merely a man of science ― not merely a poet ― not merely a man of letters. He is all combined; and perhaps he is something more.”
John Tresch is professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute in the University of London. Oliver Gaycken is an associate professor in the Department of English and a core faculty member of the Cinema and Media Studies and Comparative Literature Programs at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Hosted by the Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore. Click here to register for the event!
