HAPPY BIRTHDAY – POE & LINCOLN

“The president-mystery bond began with Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allan Poe, who were born within a month of each other in 1809. Like a lot of 19th-century readers, our 16th president was wary of popular fiction. (James A. Garfield, our 20th president, complained in his diary about “sensational novel writers, who devote themselves chiefly to their plots.”) But Lincoln made an exception for Poe, reading his pioneering detective stories soon after their publication; he could quote full passages from classics like “The Gold-Bug.”  –  from the New York Times, article by By Craig Fehrman