If “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…” sounds very familiar to you, it should! It’s probably one of the most recognized lines from one of the most famous poems ever written by Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven was first published under his name on January 29, 1845, in the New York Evening Mirror. While it made Poe a household name, it didn’t bring him overwhelming financial success.
Our library has access to the free eBook provided by Project Gutenberg. This particular copy is illustrated by Gustave Doré. His illustrations were woodcuts, “A method of printing from an inked block of medium-soft wood (usually pear or cherry) from which an artist has excised all but an illustration…in a woodcut, the finished print is conceived as dark lines on a light ground.”[i] 
While the poem is hauntingly beautiful and melodic in its own right, Doré’s illustrations are even more so. Check out The Raven in our catalog.
[i] (Reitz)
Edgar Allan Poe Museum. Poes-Biography. n.d. Website. 26 January 2017. <https://www.poemuseum.org/poes-biography>.
Reitz, Joan M. “Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science.” 2004-2014. ABC-CLIO.com. Online Document. 26 January 2017. <http://www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_w.aspx>.