SOURCE: De Jong, Mary. “‘Read Here Thy Name Concealed’: Frances Osgood's Poems on Parting with Edgar Allan Poe.” Poe Studies 32, nos. 1-2 (1999): 27-36.

In the following essay, De Jong analyzes the circumstances surrounding the termination of Osgood's literary relationship with Edgar Allan Poe and maintains that the two maintained a cryptic intratextual communication after their separation.

Introduced to Edgar Allan Poe in a drawing room in New York's Astor House in early March 1845, Frances Sargent Osgood soon became his friend and favorite American woman poet. Later that month she proudly reported to a friend Poe's praise of her work in a recent lecture on American poets: “& he did not know me then,” she wrote. “I was introduced to him afterwards—& like him very much.”¹ The Osgood-Poe relationship grew increasingly complex as they enjoyed one another's company at salons, smaller private parties, and the Poes' home, exchanged letters, and...