Southport, CT - Pequot Library will launch a new exhibit, "Pages From Pequot: Poe & Witches", which will run from October 1 - December 1, 2016. It is open during normal library hours, admission is free.
Opening Reception: October 8, 2016, 5pm - 7pm.
View early editions by Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) from the Library's Special Collections of rare books and manuscripts, plus 17th and 18th century writings by Cotton and Increase Mather about witchcraft in New England. The exhibit also includes works by contemporary artists Jakob Crane on loan from the Fairfield Museum and History Center, as well as several Poe items on loan from rare book collector Susan Jaffe Tane.
In this 21st century world where Goth and zombies have recently dominated film, literature, and music, Pequot Library takes a look back in time to when irritating your neighbor could get you tried as a witch and ravens occupied the creative mind of one of our most unique poets. In the rich expanse of Pequot’s collections, we find that Fairfield witch trials took place in the 1650s – with dire consequences – some forty years before the more publicized Salem ones.
Thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, we discover much darker materials than ever imagined by Stephen King or Anne Rice. The exhibit aims to illustrate how human imagination deals with the wonder and mystery of its time period. These two themes, from separate times in America’s formation, are brought to life thanks to the materials found in Pequot’s Special Collections for a closer look at the dark side of their times.
The wonders of the invisible world by Cotton Mather
London: Printed first, at Bostun [!] in New-England, and reprinted at London, for John Dunton, at the Raven in the Poultry, 1693
Tale of the Grotesque and Arabesque, in two volumes, dedicated by Poe to Colonel William Drayton of Philadelphia. by Edgar Allan Poe
Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840
The Raven, illustrated by Gustave Doré by Edgar Allan Poe
New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1884
Poe's Poems Little Blue Book No. 32; Edited, with an Introduction, by Nelson Antrim Crawford
by Edgar Allan Poe
Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1924
These special materials have never been on view at Pequot Library and provide a unique opportunity for the community to learn more about Poe and his brilliant work.
For this exhibit, Pequot will “bring home” a few of the most historic treasures about witches that are held at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven.
Related programming:
- Edgar Allan Poe: Book Discussions, October 25 and 26, 2016, day and evening programs
- Witch Trial Re-enactment by Greens Farms Academy theater students, November 5, 2016
- Tom Lee, Master Storyteller Spins a Spooky Tale, November 13, 2016
For more information visit pequotlibrary.org