Publication of The Raven

The Raven is a narrative poem by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, which first appeared in January 1845 in a New York newspaper and soon afterward in other journals. It tells of a grieving scholar who is visited one midnight by a raven that answers every question with the word Nevermore, driving him toward despair over his lost love, Lenore. The poem is known for its musical rhythm, internal rhymes and gloomy atmosphere, and Poe later described how he composed it. It made him famous across the United States, though he earned little money from it. It has been often parodied and adapted, and a football team in Baltimore is named after it.

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