January 14

Have you had the opportunity to read Metzengerstein: A Tale In Imitation of the German? Do you have any idea what it even is or what its plot is? If so, you are at least a couple of steps ahead of me because until I stumbled across it I had never even heard of it. It is a short story published on the 14th in 1832, in the magazine Saturday Courier and it has the distinction of being the first short story published by author Edgar Allen Poe. Poe had submitted it as his entry in a writing contest. He didn’t win but the story was published with no credit to Poe several months after the contest ran. It would go on to be published again in the Southern Literary Messenger in January 1836, in which Poe is given credit for it.