The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

Overview

On July 28, 1841, the body of Mary Rogers, a twenty-year-old cigar girl, was found floating in the Hudson-and New York's unregulated police force proved incapable of solving the crime. One year later, a struggling writer named Edgar Allan Poe decided to take on the case-and sent his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to solve the baffling murder of Mary Rogers in "The Mystery of Marie Rogt."

Editorial Reviews

The author of Edgar winner Teller of Tales now recounts the story of Manhattan tobacco store clerk Mary Rogers, a mysterious beauty whose posse of admirers made her a minor celebrity in 1841 in various newspapers' society pages. The discovery that year of her mutilated corpse fueled a public outcry and a newspaper circulation war, as well as a fictional magazine serial by Edgar Allan Poe featuring his famous detective Dupin speculating on the murder of working-class Parisian "Marie Rog�t." Poe rightly deduced that Mary wasn't a victim of the gang violence that plagued New York City in the absence of an effective police presence. But he came late to the accepted theory that Mary had died of a botched abortion and had to tweak his final installment to maintain his and Dupin's reputations. Although Stashower's account bogs down in comparisons of Poe's revisions of the Rog�t manuscript, it's a generally absorbing account of the birth of the modern detective story. The sordid details of Mary Rogers's stunted life pale in comparison with Poe's own love-starved childhood, self-destructive tidal wave of alcoholism, poverty and rants against publishers and rivals; Poe's genius and literary legacy are hauntingly drawn here. (Oct. 5)
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Author Information

Bio of Daniel Stashower

A journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous national publications, including the New York Times and Smithsonian magazine, DANIEL STASHOWER is also the author of five mystery novels and Teller of Tales, the Edgar Award-winning biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Stashower lives with his wife and son in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Penguin

Filesize

1.88 MB

Number of Pages

400

eBook ISBN

9781436252607

Awards

• Agatha Award
• Anthony Award
• Macavity Award