February 25 @ 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
As part of the Poe Beyond Baltimore series, Poe Baltimore presents a guest lecture at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Visiting from the United States, Enrica Jang, Executive Director of the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, explores Edgar Allan Poe’s early life, Scottish connections, and the transatlantic forces that shaped his work.
Orphaned at the age of two, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. Their household was shaped as much by commerce and ambition as by culture. John Allan, a Scottish-born merchant, provided Poe with education and opportunity, but the relationship between guardian and child would ultimately fracture. The resulting tension between sensitivity and pragmatism, art and industry, and belonging and exile left a lasting mark on Poe’s life and writing.
Presented in collaboration with POEtic Justice Productions, the lecture places Poe’s upbringing within its original Scottish context, tracing the Allan family’s roots and the broader nineteenth-century world of migration, commerce, and cultural exchange. Like Robert Burns, Poe emerged from uncertain circumstances and wrote with emotional intensity and fierce independence, transforming personal hardship into a lasting literary legacy.
This illustrated lecture is free and open to the public and does not require admission to the Burns Birthplace Museum, though attendees are encouraged to support the museum through a donation or tour if able. The program includes discussion and audience Q&A.
The following day, the series continues in Irvine with a separate, ticketed cemetery walk and performance. Led by Enrica Jang and actor Stephen Duffy, the event invites participants to visit the places discussed in the lecture, offering a chance to experience Poe’s Scottish connections on the ground rather than only in theory. Details for the Irvine event are available here.
Related Events
February 22 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
As part of the Poe Beyond Baltimore series, a guest lecture at the Charles Dickens Museum in London, England. Visiting from the United States, Enrica Jang, Director of the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, presents a talk exploring the brief but intriguing relationship between Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.
In 1842, Poe sought out Dickens during the novelist’s American tour, hoping for conversation, connection, and perhaps professional support. Though their direct contact was short-lived, it would echo through the rest of Poe’s career. Drawing on surviving correspondence, sharp literary exchanges, and shared frustrations over international copyright, the lecture traces a transatlantic dialogue shaped by admiration, ambition, and creative rivalry.
Jang also examines Poe’s famously perceptive critique of Dickens’s serialized fiction, the possible influence of Dickens’s pet raven, Grip, on Poe’s most iconic poem, and Dickens’s quiet decision to assist Poe’s surviving family years after his death. While Poe’s admiration for Dickens is well documented, Dickens’s view of Poe remains uncertain, leaving behind a literary connection with a wisp of mystery.
This lecture is included with paid admission to the Charles Dickens Museum.
After museum close, continue the conversation with Enrica and actor, Stephen Smith, at Poe & a Pint, a ticketed evening discussion and performance devoted to Edgar Allan Poe, held at a nearby pub within walking distance of the museum in Bloomsbury. Details for the evening event are available here.
