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happyinsmallways t1_jcpgmdm wrote

My understanding is that Dickens and Poe actually met. I’ve heard two versions. One where Poe actually met Grip and one where Grip had recently died from the paint and Dickens told Poe about it.

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Important_Collar_36 t1_jcrg45o wrote

I can see Poe being sufficiently freaked out by the stuffed bird of his British equivalent that he wrote a whole creepy ass poem about it.

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happyinsmallways t1_jcrhao1 wrote

I watched an old lecture on Poe and the speaker suggests that when Poe realized that there had been a death in the Dickens family and that it was a raven he was THRILLED lol he was obsessed with death. According to this lecturer anyway, but his body of work does support that lol

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Important_Collar_36 t1_jcrimbn wrote

I was always taught that he was equal parts fascinated and repulsed by death, a truly "morbid curiosity". So he was freaked out by the bird but couldn't get it off his mind and wrote a strange, twisted horror-poem about it.

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happyinsmallways t1_jcriru1 wrote

Makes sense to me! He was surrounded by death growing up so I can imagine there were complicated feelings there

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