Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at the manuscript of “For Annie,” a poem that Edgar Allan Poe wrote when he lived in a cottage in the Bronx. Annie was married, but that didn’t stop him. We’ll also look at a report that found “big gaps” in the way City Hall prepares for extreme weather.
Also, so you know: New York Today will focus on what’s going on in New York this week — aside from the trial of former President Donald Trump. We’ll summarize the developments in our Latest New York News section, and you can also sign up to receive our Trump on Trial newsletter.
Credit…Earl Wilson/The New York Times
“This is a very special moment,” Richard Austin said, leaning over a yellowed sheet of paper that had been placed on a writing desk — a now-faded original manuscript of a famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe, “For Annie.”
Austin, the head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s, was standing in a stark, white room at the Poe Cottage on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, where Poe lived when he wrote “For Annie.”
Sotheby’s expects the page to sell for $400,000 to $600,000 in June. That would have been an unimaginable sum for Poe, who was so poor when he lived in the cottage that his mother-in-law “resorted to digging up the turnips meant for the cattle,” one Poe biographer wrote. His wife’s mother, Maria Clemm, also gathered dandelions “and other greens” for salads.
