Comparing Edgar Allan Poe And Thomas Cole

This essay will be about comparing Edgar Allan Poe, the father of detective novels, and Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson Valley River school. Though these two have very different backgrounds, they have some similarities in their works. This discussion will be explaining how their works compare and also give evidence on where it is similar. Then we will look at three sets of works from each of them as proof to these sameness. Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of House of Usher” and Thomas Cole's “The Vesper Hymn” are the first two art works that will be compared. After that, Poe's “The Gold Bug” and Cole's “Titan's Goblet” are the next to be analyzed. Then Poe's “The Masque of The Red Death” and Cole's “Destruction of Empire” will

be the last to be proven. We would first look into some history of both Thomas Cole and Edgar Allan Poe.
To begin, Thomas Cole was born in 1801 at Bolton, Lancashire in Northwestern England and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1818 (thomascole.org). During the early parts of Cole's life, he moved from place to place. He lived in Philadelphia, Ohio, and Pittsburgh. Cole worked as an itinerant portrait artist, also known as an artist that travels from place to place selling his art for a little money. Cole was mainly self-taught but he worked with members of the Philadelphia Academy (thomascole.org). In 1825, Cole discovered the area of Catskill, he made small paintings of the landscape in this style. There was one man who adored Cole's landscape art and wanted to help him advertise his art. That man was Asher B. Durand, a man from New York City who was at first an engraver. Durand engraved the Declaration of Independence. After befriending Cole, Durand accompanied Cole on a sketching expedition to Schroon Lake.
Afterward, a friendship was formed and Thomas Cole's fame spread.

While he was still in his twenties, Cole was made a fellow of the National Academy (thomascole.org). Many artists started following in Cole's footsteps and this was the beginning of the Hudson River School. Hudson River School was an art movement that was influenced by romanticism. In 1829-1831, Cole returned to Great Britain for study, to attend to family business and to travel to France and Italy (thomascole.org). Wealthy Americans traveled to Europe to discover their identity around the same time. This benefited Cole greatly because his reputation increased and his wealth as well. Cole became one of the most famous landscape artists. His best-known series of paintings, also my favorite, came after he returned from Europe in 1832. The series was known as “ The Course of Empire.” This series displayed some of Cole's darker and realistic paintings. Thomas Cole married Maria Bartow around the same time that Cole's father and his patron Luman passed away. A few years later Cole became more religious and started developing another series of paintings called “The Cross and the World.” And on February 11, 1848, Thomas Cole died from lung problems. Even with such a short life, Cole had a successful career as an artist. He was considered the founder of the Hudson River School and he developed numerous works of arts that are still studied to this

day.
Edgar Allan Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead (poemuseum.org). Poe was a versatile writer. He made short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, and a book of scientific theory (poemuseum.org). He was a man with a dark sense of humor. He used plenty of sarcasm in his writings, which made his writings more interesting. The reader could form different conclusions after reading Poe's stories. Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. When Poe was three, both of his parents died and he was adopted by John Allan and Frances Valentine Allan. Mr. Allan wanted to push Poe to be a businessman but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron (poemuseum.org).
Early poems written by Poe show how little interest he had in the tobacco business.

At the young age of thirteen, Poe already had enough poetry to create a book. This just shows the extremely high artistic skills and intelligence Edgar Allan Poe had. Poe's young adult life was a depressing point in his life. It starts with Poe moved out of Richmond to attend the University of Virginia. He excelled in his classes but he accumulated a huge amount of debt. This was caused by the fact that Mr. Allan sent Poe to college with less than a third of the money needed to attend the college. In attempt to get by, Poe took up gambling to raise money but this ended up in a failure. His situation was so severe that he burned his furniture to keep warm (poemuseum.org). Poe felt humiliated by his his poverty and was angry with his foster father for not helping him with funding. He returned to Richmond to find out his fiancée Elmira Royster became engaged to another while Poe was away at school. With all these problems in his life, Edgar Allan Poe final stormed out of his home in Richmond to pursue his dream to become a great poet. He accomplished the first objective by publishing his first book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen

(poemuseum.org).
After Poe's foster mother passed away, he fell off with Mr. Allan and he turned to Baltimore, his late father's home. The only family member that would help out Poe was his aunt, Maria Clemm. She became a new mother to him. Clemm's daughter helped sway Poe's lady loves but later on became the lady he loved. Poe was still living in poverty but had started creating short stories. One of the stories won a contest, which gave Poe the connections necessary to publish more stories and gave him a job opportunity as an editor for the Southern Literary Messenger . This is the same magazine that Poe became a magazine writer. At twenty-seven years old, Poe married Virginia Clemm. This was a happy marriage. They would express each others love by creating poems for each other. Poe was receiving low pay and did not have much editorial control in the magazine. So he decided to move to New York City. Since it was during the financial crisis known as the “Panic of 1837”, Poe was having difficulty finding magazine work. He only stayed for a year in New York than moved to Philadelphia where he wrote for different magazines.
Even with all this work he was still barely making a living. Although he was struggling with finances he was still able to enjoy his home life that was until his wife contracted tuberculosis, this is the same disease that took away his mother , brother, and foster mother. While dealing with his wife's illness, Poe searched for new opportunities wherever he could find it. He moved back to New York and created a fictional story to catch the attention of the people and it worked. After the publication of “The Raven”, Poe became a household name. He was finally accomplishing his dream. He published two books in the same year. But just like his whole life, that happiness did not last too long. Two problems arose during this time: his wife's health was diminishing and rumors were spreading about him having relations with married women. These issues caused him to leave the city in 1846. He moved to a small cottage in the countryside of New York. It was there, in the winter of 1847 that Virginia died at the age of twenty-four (poemuseum.org). Poe was unable to write for months after his wife passed. During this absence, critics thought Poe would die quickly, and they were right. Two years later, Poe died from unknown causes. With the help of rival Rufus Griswold, Poe's books sales were higher than the time he was alive. Griswold was trying to discredit Poe by writing harmful things about him but this backfired. Instead Griswold helped create the Poe legend that we know today.