Friday, April 24, 2020

Literary Faces (I)

Back in my Marquette days as a TA (Teaching Assistant) I used to enjoy putting pictures of famous writers up on my office door. I found it interesting to contrast my preconception of what the writer of some significant work looked like with what he or she really looked like.

So I thought it might be fun to post a series of photographs or portraits of famous writers to see if folks cd recognize who they were. Some will be obvious, others less so.

Here's writer #1:






I'll post the answer in a few days in the comments.

--JDR
--current reading: NETWORK EFFECT by Martha Wells (2020), UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN THEMES IN TOLKIEN'S LEGENDARIUM by Mark Doyle (2020)

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3 comments:

  1. ATMachineApril 25, 2020 at 3:38 AM

    Eh bien, as Auguste Dupin would say, c'est Monsieur Poe, n'est-ce pas?

    Andrew McCarthy (ATM)

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  2. John D. RateliffApril 27, 2020 at 4:47 PM

    Well spotted, ATM. This one was slightly tricky in that not everyone knows that Poe only had his famous mustache in the last five years of his life. But since he grew it about the same time he became internationally famous (for THE RAVEN), and all eight of the known daguerreotypes of him date from those years, that's the image we have of him.

    --John R.

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  3. Rodolfo Mangosta PeferbaumMay 10, 2020 at 12:12 PM

    How interesting. I remember reading (a long time ago) a short biographical volume on Poe, which noted that many who knew him thought he was quite handsome. I couldn't believe it, because I had ever only seen pictures of Poe where his features were, well, ravaged by his alcoholism. (I guess this also has a lot to do with the prevailing view of Poe as a poète maudit in Europe.)

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