From the Editor

The Edgar Allan Poe Review begins its twentieth year of production with this issue, and we want to thank all the editorial board members—past and present—for their diligent responses to the many articles they are asked to assess. We especially thank outgoing members of the board—Benjamin Franklin Fisher and Sean Moreland—for their many years of service. We welcome the following new members to the board beginning July 1, 2009: Paul Grimstad, Columbia University; and José Ramón R. Ibáñez, University of Almería.

Founded in 2000 as an outgrowth of the Poe Studies Association Newsletter (begun in 1972 and to be distinguished from the Poe Newsletter begun in 1968), the Edgar Allan Poe Review was housed for thirteen years at Penn State Lehigh Valley (with a three-year hiatus at St. Joseph's College under the editorship of Richard Fusco), where all production aspects of the journal were handled. Financial support came from Penn State Lehigh Valley, the PSA, and, in the last couple of years, a generous gift from Burton Pollin that allowed us to include color images. In 2013, the director of Penn State University Press, Patrick Alexander, offered to include our journal in their collection, and the PSA agreed. Since then, all the production chores are handled by the staff at the press, and our journal enjoys the added attention and benefits of being represented in JSTOR and Project MUSE.

We note here that the projected guest-edited issue that was to emerge from the "Poe in the Age of Populism" conference in Spain did not come to fruition; nonetheless, the articles in this issue as well as the interview with J. R. Thompson, a transcript of his talk given in Brazil, and the transcript of Takayuki Tatsumi's plenary talk given at the International Poe and Hawthorne Conference in Kyoto should prove enjoyable and informative. Included below is an overview of the Kyoto gathering written by Conor Scuton, the conference's social media coordinator:

The International Poe and Hawthorne Conference (June 22–24, 2018) involved years of planning for the organizers and, for many of us, required upwards of a day of travel to arrive in Kyoto, Japan, so it was a great treat to participate in a conference that offered so many opportunities for building relationships among colleagues. We are indebted to the conference's sponsoring organizations: the Poe Studies Association, the Poe Society of Japan, the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, and the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society of Japan, and especially to Susan Jaffee Tane and Samuel Chase Coale for their generous travel grants that helped scholars to attend. Other sponsors included the Japanese American Studies Foundation, Stephan Loewentheil, Boston College, Brigham Young University, Kyoto City MICE, Western Kentucky University, Philip Phillips, and Sharmila Patel. Thanks to their generous contributions we were all able to share our work with one another in Kyoto.

On the first night, conference organizers Sandra Hughes and Masahiko Narita opened proceedings, thanking attendees for their participation and recognizing PSA donor Susan Jaffe Tane and Hawthorne Society donor Samuel Chase Coale. The following people were also recognized for their work in planning the conference: Carole Shaffer-Koros, registrar and treasurer; Philip Philips, chair of the Program Committee that included Richard Kopley, Sam Coale, and Derek Pacheco; and Naochika Takao, designer of the conference logo and conference program. The conference was attended by 180 scholars from fifteen countries. Stephan Loewentheil sponsored the reception as well as a koto ensemble that entertained us throughout the night with traditional Japanese music. Our conference hosts were incredibly kind and welcoming, and much of the talk that night focused on the importance of strengthening our sense of community as Poe and Hawthorne scholars from many nations and institutions.

Immediately on the first day of presentations, fulfilling and enlightening conversations began among decades-old colleagues as well as graduate students and other newcomers. Whether the topic of discussion on the panels was the Gothic, national identity, Poe and cosmogony, or Hawthorne and natural landscapes, these explorations of the work of Poe and Hawthorne inevitably continued at coffee and lunch breaks. In the day's closing session...