on its beaches. William Gilmore Simms, Henry Timrod, Henry James, Amy Lowell, DuBose Heyward, Josephine Pinckney, in addition to Edgar Allan Poe (to name only a few), have connections here. Simms and Timrod were born here. James visited in 1904. Heyward and Pinckney were residents and founding members of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Lowell and Pinckney were close friends. And so the connections go on. So what of Poe’s relationship?
Stationed to Fort Moultrie from November 1827 to December 1828, his stay here was short. According to Peeples, he was writing mostly poetry in the 1820s, but it is widely known that, “The Gold Bug,” a short story first published in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper in June 1843, was based upon his experiences on Sullivan’s Island. (The story is set there.) Interestingly still, in Peeples’ essay, “Poe’s Charleston/ Charleston’s Poe,” the scholar notes that Poe’s time in Charleston finally became a matter of public record in 1885, but the connection did not seem to be valued until the 1920s—the time of the Charleston Literary Renaissance. Led by John Bennett,
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AZALEA MAGAZINE / SPRING 2011
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