A Tale of Optics: Poe, Visual Culture, and Antebellum Literary Celebrity

“A Tale of Optics” situates many of Poe’s tales and sketches—including “The Man of the Crowd” and “The Literati of New York City”—alongside antebellum interest in magazine illustrations and daguerreotypy. In a publishing world where editors and mass readership privileged commodified visual culture, Poe crafted his image in various, often contradictory, ways. In some moments he satirizes that readership, and in others he markets a symbiotic relationship between writer and visual artist. Likewise, he touts the “realism” of early photography (in opposition to engravings and other kinds of illustrations) while using the veil of objectivity to hide his own self-interest. Poe’s image is as familiar to us as some of his best-known works. “A Tale of Optics” reveals an intriguing literary history behind such image making by including but also moving beyond daguerreotype portraiture.