The almost 40-year-old Edgar Allan Poe is depressed. He cries for nights at a time. Drinks without stopping. Takes opium. On 2nd November 1848, he stuffs himself with laudanum and boards a train from Providence to Boston. But for him this journey is to end somewhere else entirely. At least that’s his plan.

Why was Poe in such a gloomy mood? Was he so affected by what he wrote? Was the darkness of the American’s own art coming out of him? After all, he was the author of the gloomy poem “The Raven”, the shocking crime story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and the tale of horror “The Masque of the Red Death”. But he also wrote things with a wink and a nod, funny and grotesque. And even educational. It was in 1848 that he published “Eureka”, an essay “on the material and spiritual universe”. He saw it as his opus magnum, but it didn’t win the recognition he expected. It bored or appalled even Poe’s friends. But this was just one of the many blows that fell on the writer during that period. Another brick in the wall.