Edgar Allan Poe: Was Mary Rogers his Muse or his Murder Victim?

Edgar Allan Poe is considered a literary genius and one of the fathers of horror literature as well as the inventor of the detective story. Poe was gifted with an undoubtedly brilliant mind able to create elaborate plots. He showed the darkest and most intricate aspects of the human soul with which he was able to provoke feelings of fear, anguish and unease in the readers daring enough to immerse themselves in his stories.

Poe published stories in the journal Ladies’ Companion, between the months of November 1842 and February 1843. One of these stories was The Mystery of Marie Roget: a “whodunit” story in three parts about the mysterious death of a cute brunette. 

The author was inspired by a real event: the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, a young woman known in New York of the 1840s as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl” who was found dead floating in the waters of the Hudson River on July 28, 1841. For a long time, Edgar Allan Poe was a possible murder suspect.