Edgar Allan Poe signature

Who Edgar Allan Poe was

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in January 1809 and died in Baltimore in October 1849. He wrote The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and earned his living mostly as a magazine editor and critic in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York.

Born Edgar Poe, he took the middle name Allan from John Allan, the Richmond merchant who raised him after his mother’s death. He rarely wrote the middle name in full.

The story of the signature

Poe’s usual signature was “Edgar A. Poe”. It appears on letters to editors and fellow writers, such as a letter to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, now in the Boston Public Library, in which Poe describes the founding of Graham’s Magazine and asks Longfellow to write for it.

Poe was unusually interested in signatures. In 1836 he published a piece called “Autography” in the Southern Literary Messenger, framed as a comic hoax, that reproduced facsimile signatures of well-known writers. In 1841 and 1842 he returned to the idea in “A Chapter on Autography” in Graham’s Magazine, printing the signatures of dozens of American authors and commenting on what each hand suggested about its owner’s character. Today handwriting is not considered a reliable guide to personality, but the articles are an early example of popular interest in autographs.

His own manuscripts are known for being neat and legible, a practical habit for someone who sent copy to printers for a living. Large collections of his letters and manuscripts are held in libraries including the Boston Public Library and the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, and at the Poe Museum in Richmond.

What makes it distinctive

How to give your signature a similar feel

• In the Type tab of the signature generator, try Pinyon Script, or Sacramento for a thinner line, with a Slant around 6°. Both keep letters clear, like a manuscript meant for a printer.
• Use your middle initial. “First M. Last” is a classic nineteenth-century format and makes a short surname look balanced.
• Choose black ink and keep spacing even. The style depends on regular letters, not flourishes.
• If your surname is short, let the capital of your first name be the largest letter, then compare the result with other signature fonts.

Where to see the original

These links lead to archives, libraries, museums and Wikimedia Commons.

• Wikimedia Commons: Poe’s letter to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston Public Library, scanned PDF)
• Wikimedia Commons: Poe’s signature (vector tracing)