SOURCE: Stewart, E. Kate. “‘The Raven’ and ‘The Bracelets.’” In Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, edited by Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV, pp. 189-93. Baltimore, Md.: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, Inc., 1990.

In the following essay, Stewart suggests that “The Raven” may have been inspired by Samuel Warren's story “The Bracelets,” which appeared in 1832.

Although a fair number of sources for Poe's most famous poem, “The Raven,” are cited in The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by the late doyen to all Poe scholars, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, evidence points to yet another addition to this compendium. I propose that a tale by Samuel Warren, “The Bracelets”—in Blackwood's for January 1832—contains parallels to “The Raven” too striking to ignore.¹ Poe's awareness of Warren's writings was acute, and that a good Gothic tale like “The Bracelets” should remain in his mind as he composed...