The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "IN JUNE OF 1842, Edgar Allan Poe took up his pen to broach a delicate subject with an old friend..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mary Rogers, New York, Marie Rogęt (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Edgar winner Teller of Tales now recounts the story of Manhattan tobacco store clerk Mary Rogers, a mysterious beauty whose posse of admirers made her a minor celebrity in 1841 in various newspapers' society pages. The discovery that year of her mutilated corpse fueled a public outcry and a newspaper circulation war, as well as a fictional magazine serial by Edgar Allan Poe featuring his famous detective Dupin speculating on the murder of working-class Parisian "Marie Rogêt." Poe rightly deduced that Mary wasn't a victim of the gang violence that plagued New York City in the absence of an effective police presence. But he came late to the accepted theory that Mary had died of a botched abortion and had to tweak his final installment to maintain his and Dupin's reputations. Although Stashower's account bogs down in comparisons of Poe's revisions of the Rogêt manuscript, it's a generally absorbing account of the birth of the modern detective story. The sordid details of Mary Rogers's stunted life pale in comparison with Poe's own love-starved childhood, self-destructive tidal wave of alcoholism, poverty and rants against publishers and rivals; Poe's genius and literary legacy are hauntingly drawn here. (Oct. 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

The death of Mary Rogers remains one of the great unsolved murders in American history. The bruised and beaten body of the 20-year-old woman was discovered in the Hudson River along the Hoboken, N.J., shoreline on July 28, 1841. A cord wrapped around her throat, her torn clothing, and marks resembling a man's thumb on her neck convinced authorities that she was the victim of a violent assault. Within hours, New York's newspapers erupted in an explosion of lurid speculation and sexual sensationalism.

A host of suspects was rounded up over the ensuing months, including two suitors, but no one was ever convicted of the crime. A year later, a dying and delirious innkeeper claimed that Rogers had perished from a botched abortion at her establishment. Her son had disposed of the body. Although the innkeeper's confession was riddled with inconsistencies, her story became the standard explanation, primarily because it served as the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt."

Poe was the offspring of actors, abandoned by his father and adopted by the wealthy Allan family of Richmond, Va. Poe's volatile personality and his adoptive father's strict mores generated more than a few heated conflicts; they ultimately culminated in Poe's disinheritance. Poe proved to be his own worst enemy, dropping out of the University of Virginia and West Point. These and other failures were shaped in part by his repeated battles with alcoholism. Even when his writing career started to ascend, this pattern of self-destruction continually appeared, costing him many friends and numerous opportunities. To make matters worse, he married his 13-year-old cousin, whom he adored; in short time, she contracted tuberculosis. Her slow, agonizing death only deepened Poe's depression. In the midst of all this, he exploited the frenzy surrounding Rogers's death by attempting to solve her murder in a three-part article in Ladies' Companion during the winter of 1842-43.

Daniel Stashower, the author of an acclaimed biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, uses Rogers and Poe to weave a compelling narrative of antebellum New York. Although the two protagonists never knew each other, their lives and postmortem histories intersected in surprising ways. Rogers worked in John Anderson's cigar emporium, a place popular with numerous writers and journalists who worked nearby along Nassau and Ann Streets. Here Rogers interacted with Poe's literary associates, writers from the penny press, flash weeklies and sporting papers. Most important, she became their object of affection and admiration. She might even be considered America's first sex symbol. Antebellum America had no pin-ups, popular striptease shows or mass pornography. Instead, cigar girls, confectionary workers and other attractive salesgirls served as the objects of the prurient male gaze. As the Herald newspaper pointed out, "Mary Rogers's face was well known to all 'young men about town.' "

Stashower deftly combines his talents as a novelist, mystery writer and biographer in The Beautiful Cigar Girl. Yet many of the larger themes surrounding the lives of Poe and Rogers are well-known to Poe aficionados and antebellum historians. Scholars and more curious readers will also be frustrated by the absence of endnotes identifying the sources of the many provocative quotes.

Stashower nevertheless demonstrates how Poe and Rogers shared more than just an unsolved murder mystery. As the historian and literary critic David Reynolds has shown, the penny press generated lascivious and gruesome images of sexuality and crime during the 1830s and '40s. Such stereotypes influenced many writers: not only Poe but also Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Emily Dickinson and others associated with America's 19th-century literary renaissance. Stashower clarifies even more precisely how Poe's effort to "solve" the murder of Rogers was directly influenced by the mud-slinging and half-truths propagated by the popular media of the era. Much of "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" was a direct response to the spurious and sometimes fantastic theories invented by the penny press to explain Rogers's violent demise.

The stories of Poe and Rogers offer a vivid counterpoint to an America frequently defined by manifest destiny and economic "progress." Both characters embody the commonplace tragedies of their era. Each of their families fell victim to the Panic of 1837, a six-year depression that represented the worst economic calamity up to that point in American history. Each one had talent -- Poe as a writer, Rogers as an "intense and irresistible" beauty. Both migrated to New York in hopes of resuscitating their finances. Each lived along Gotham's economic precipice, hovering over an abyss of abject poverty. Each died young. Downward mobility and personal misfortune were ordinary experiences in 19th-century America, with literary accolades and celebrity status affording little protection.

Reviewed by Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (October 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052594981X
• ASIN: B000N3T40G
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #683,437 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Nevermore", November 6, 2006

By	Frank J. Konopka (Shamokin, PA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder (Hardcover)

Although this book holds itself out to be a review of the grisly murder of Mary Rogers in 1841 New York, it appears to, instead, turn into a biography of Edgar Allan Poe. That's not to say that this is a bad thing, but perhaps the title should have reflected that more than it does. The book is well written, with emphasis on what the newspapers of the time reported. That there is no solution to the murder mystery does dampen the enthusiasm of the reader somewhat, but that's what often happens when dealing with true crimes. I found the atmosphere presented very tangible, and I did enjoy the Poe biography (I've been to his grave in Baltimore), so the book held my interest. Perhaps others, not as interested in Poe as I am, will not find the book as enjoyable to read.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One girl goes missing and transforms history, January 14, 2008

By	C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL is attention-holding social and literary history nimbly written by Daniel Stashower. It is the story of a real crime committed in July 1841 in or about New York City that transfixed the media of the day, challenged Edgar Allan Poe to put his detective fiction theories to the test and transformed New York before eventually fading away in the public consciousness a few decades later.

If there is something to be learned by the ubiquitous episodes of the "Law and Order" and "CSI" franchises, it is that a murder is never straightforward. Just like those shows, when the lovely, alluring yet innocent seeming Manhattan store clerk who worked in a popular smoke shop frequented by men of all walks of life goes missing and her body is later found washing up near a waterfront park in Hoboken, New Jersey, Pandora's box is opened. Circumstantial evidence suggests connections to the city's gang culture and abortionists. There is a revolving door of individual suspects, too, who may or may not have been the victim's swains. The police department is largely night watchmen and process servers prone to corruption and unequal to the task of fighting and detecting crime. Then the media steps in and it is hyped beyond belief. In Philadelphia, where he has taken umbrage after burning just about every personal and professional bridge in New York, Poe reads the newspaper accounts and realizes that his ever-present money problems and professional ambitions could be resolved by inserting the fictive detecting methods he created for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." He puts himself on the line, advertising that in his new story starring his detective Dupin, "The Mystery of Marie Roget," he will solve the puzzle.

To say more is to spoil this very real plot. I think Stashower does a fine job of balancing and interweaving the various strands of biography, social history, crime detection and the birth of detective fiction. He has a very direct but graceful way of writing and ordering his information. He evokes 19th century New York vividly. If you liked THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, then you should enjoy this. My only complaint, too small to demote the book a star, is that I wish the author were more explicit as to naming his sources when he quotes, for instance, "a writer of the day." There is a considerable bibliography at the end, but no idea which source gave up what information per se.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reads like a novel but it's a true story!, October 9, 2006

By	Larry Kahaner "www.AK-47book.com" (Mclean, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder (Hardcover)

It's a true story, but The Beautiful Cigar Girl reads like a top-flight mystery novel. I'm a big fan of biographies, and Stashower makes this period come to life. This is a great follow-up to his "Teller of Tales" a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle for which he won the prestigous Edgar Award.
The final chapters read like something Poe himself might have written. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
It's too bad the rating system only goes to five stars!