The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” was published on December 20, 1845, in The Broadway Journal (a print publication of which Poe himself was an editor) in the United States, and then later in England. Due to the distinctive, deliberate way in which it is written—with, as Poe wrote, “a more pronounced effort at verisimilitude for the sake of effect” (Poe, Edgar Allan. Qtd. in “Poe: A Life in Letters,” by Lesley Ginsberg. The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford Academic Books, 2018)—Poe was surprised to learn that many readers actually mistook the fictional story for an account of a real event. He wrote, “I find the Valdemar case universally copied and received as truth […] even in spite of my disclaimer” (Poe, Edgar Allan. Qtd. in “Poe: A Life in Letters,” by Lesley Ginsberg. The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford Academic Books, 2018). Though sometimes considered an example of a literary “hoax” for this reason, Poe himself claimed that his intention was not to fool the public, but rather to employ a convincing, report-like style to lend an air of believability to his tale and to make it more effective as a horror story.

The story has been widely admired, including by the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who wrote to Poe that the story was “going the round of the newspapers, about mesmerism, throwing us all into ‘most admired disorder, and dreadful doubts as to whether it can be true,’ as the children say of ghost stories” (Qtd. in “Poe: A Life in Letters,” by Lesley Ginsberg. The Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe. Oxford Academic Books, 2018). While we now access this text in collections of Poe’s writings and know him as the author of famous works of horror and mystery fiction, at the time, a story written in such a style, suggesting a connection with scientific research, and published in a journal resulted in confusion for some readers and interest and delight in others. Once readers understand that this is, indeed, a product of Poe’s imagination, this theme, already present in the text through its use of specific kinds of language and the attitude of its Narrator to the story he is telling, is further underscored. The story is therefore about, and also engenders, a consideration of the tricky interplay of fact and fiction.