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Undine

Deja Vu
When reading this novel, I gradually came to a very troubling conclusion: It--to put it in the mildest terms--borrows extensively from an earlier novel told from the point of view of Virginia Poe--Cothburn O'Neal's "The Very Young Mrs. Poe." There are entire sections in "The Raven's Bride" that mirror its predecessor: The scene where Poe and Virginia leave for their honeymoon and their arrival at Petersburg, the scene where she develops pneumonia, the scene where Poe, Virginia, and her mother arrive at Richmond, the scene of the couple boating on the Wissahickon, the scene where a drunken Poe arrives home carrying a caged bird that he bought in some low dive, the plot element having Virginia spend a year of bed rest, the scene where Poe unexpectedly returns to their home at the Brennan Farm to find that Virginia has taken to her bed, the scene where Virginia sends Poe into hysteria by tactlessly saying that he is just like his sister Rosalie, the scene where Poe, Virginia, and Mrs. Clemm arrive in Richmond (including the exact same description of the boardinghouse room Virginia and her mother are given)--the (completely invented) characterizations and descriptions of "Granny Poe," Thomas Dunn English, and other minor characters--even many specific lines of dialogue--all these, and more, are unnervingly similar. And it is not as though Hart and O'Neal both fictionalized similar historical sources. Rather, Hart used as source material scenes and dialogue completely invented by O'Neal. What we are given here cannot be called the historical Poe and Virginia--it is a homage to O'Neal's Poe and Virginia.

The similarities were unnerving enough to make me ignore the book's desperate need for a copyeditor: Frances Osgood is called "Osborne" several times, the married Elizabeth Ellet is called "Miss," in one scene Virginia's nightgown is described as "flannel" in one paragraph and "thin cotton" a few lines down...It all made me wonder if this novel wasn't written in a panicky deadline-inspired rush.

I hope every reader of "The Raven's Bride" also reads O'Neal's novel, to see if they come to the same conclusions.