The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science is a new and well-regarded ‘full scientific biography’, in which the author works through Poe’s scientific ideas and his advancement of science. As such it seems of obvious relevance to his youthful devotee H.P. Lovecraft.

I guess “Forging” was chosen by the marketeers for the title because it reminds the shelf-browser of “Forgery”. Poe did sometimes run pranks and hoaxes, and certain things — phrenology, spiritualism, animal magnetism, the ether and the like — were then still open to debate. Though the title’s use of “Forging” might give young minds the unfortunate first-impression that all of early American science was somehow a “forgery”. But if they are intelligent enough to read the book, then I guess they would soon learn their error.

As I’ve suggested here before, one of his hoaxes may have had an unintended small-but-positive effect on global history. Poe was also likely leaning on what was then a relatively recent past for hoaxes. This history is surveyed by another new book The Century of Deception: The birth of the hoax in eighteenth-century England. Also relevant to Lovecraft, perhaps, due to his devotion to the wits and writers of the 18th century. Also because of his own liking for staging the occasional hoax. The book is said to ably document the range of hoaxers and hoaxes which emerged at that time. From canny amateurs out to trip up the growing class of ‘experts’ and puffed-up ‘celebrities’, down to moustache-twiddling cads and their complex hoax-based swindles.