Text: J. W. Ostrom, B. R. Pollin, and J. A. Savoye, “Illustration 01,” The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. I: 1824-1845 (2008), between pp. 74 and 75, I-A (This material is protected by copyright)

01. Mrs. Elizabeth Arnold Poe and St. John's Churchyard, in Richmond, VA, where she is buried

Courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Gimbel Collection, and the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

Poe carried a portrait of his mother, painted on ivory by Thomas Sully (1783-1872), the whereabouts of which are uncertain. The surviving miniature is probably the copy painted by Mrs. Shew, sent to J. H. Ingram, ca. April 15, 1875 (see Miller, Building Poe Biography, pp. 131-132; and Deas, The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe, pp. 185, n 114 and 117). The catalog for the exhibit of the collection of Col. Richard Gimbel states that the miniature was purchased in 1955 by Ivan Kats in a flea market in Paris (Yale University Library Gazette, April 1959, 33:139, item 3).