Posted on October 21, 2020 at 8:11 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

The starving artist trope is starting to have a new accompanying cliche: the letter that said starving artist writes begging for money being sold for very large sums.

Poet and short-story master Edgar Allan Poe, in 1847, wrote the editor of Graham’s Magazine asking about the $40 he was owed for two articles.

On October 7, the 171st anniversary of Poe’s death, the letter was sold at auction for $125,125, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

(That, in case you’re curious, is 3,128 times the amount that Poe sought in the letter.)

You can read more about the letter’s history and even read it yourself in the Inquirer.

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Categories: Today in Books

Tagged As: History, Short story

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