The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City

Literary critic Scott Peeples reframes Edgar Allan Poe not as the isolated gothic recluse of popular mythology but as an urban writer deeply shaped by the American cities he inhabited: Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York. Drawing on geography, social history, and close reading, The Man of the Crowd examines how Poe's writing absorbed the rhythms, anxieties, and social contradictions of nineteenth-century American city life, including urban slavery and the violence of rapid industrialization.

Daniel Henning narrates with the careful clarity that academic argument requires, moving through Peeples's textual analysis and historical context without losing accessibility for listeners who come from general interest rather than Poe scholarship. The evocative photographs by Michelle Van Parys are described in ways that enhance rather than simply annotate the text. At six hours, this is a concise, intellectually stimulating reconsideration of a canonical American writer.