Episode #215 – Edgar Allan Poe: Hoax Master?

Edgar Allan Poe has been remembered as one of America’s greatest authors and poets. However, many are less familiar with is career as a hoaxer. In the 1830’s and 1840’s Poe made a name for himself orchestrating elaborate newspaper hoaxes, and debunking hoaxes attempted by others. Poe specialized in deceptions that dealt with the frontiers of science. Some of these scientific hoaxes flopped, while others drummed up real excitement among astonished readers. What was the secret sauce that made a newspaper hoax go large? Tune-in and find out how moon-gnomes, chess playing automatons, and bipedal space beavers all play a role in the story.

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. “‘The Balloon Hoax’ (Text-02B), New York Sun, Extra, April 13, 1844, p. 1, Cols 2-6.” Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore – Works – Tales – The Balloon Hoax (Text-02b), www.eapoe.org/works/tales/ballhxa.htm.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “‘Hans Phaall’ (Text-02a), Manuscript, April or May 1835.” Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore – Works – Tales – Hans Phaall (Text-02a), www.eapoe.org/works/tales/unphlla.htm. 

Poe, Edgar Allan. ‘Maelzel’s Chess-Player’ Southern Literary Messenger, April 1836, 2:318-326.” Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore – Works – Tales – Maelzel’s Chess-Player (Text-02), www.eapoe.org/works/essays/maelzel.htm#fn32301.

Rice, Stephen P. “Making Way for the Machine: Maelzel’s Automaton Chess-Player and Antebellum American Culture.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 106, 1994, pp. 1–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25081081. 

Sussman, Mark. “Performing the Intelligent Machine: Deception and Enchantment in the Life of the Automaton Chess Player.” TDR (1988-) 43, no. 3 (1999): 81–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146770.

Tresch, John. The Reason for the Darkness of the Night : Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science. First paperback edition., Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.

Walsh, Lynda C. (Lynda Christine). Sins against Science : The Scientific Media Hoaxes of Poe, Twain, and Others. State University of New York Press, 2006.